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jaw allows, and paid all the teachers for seven months and
a-half. Under the old arrangement, individual schools were
frequently suspended until the public money should accu-
mulate. IB the records of a school now before me, I find a
suspension from July 4,1864, to January 14,1865; and I do
not doubt that in many other records, if accurately kept, the
fact of frequent interruptions will be found. It was rarely
noticed, because the suspension was never at any time gen-
eral throughout the County, except at vacations.

The supervision of the schools has been very thorough—
every school having been visited and examined repeatedly by

some one of the Commissioners, and often by two.

The teachers are far better fitted to the work; in cases
where the old incumbents have been retained, they manifest
and express a much more earnest spirit in their labors; a
professional pride it springing up, and a degree of zeal
awakened heretofore unknown in this part of Maryland.
An active and rigorous Teachers' Association was formed
immediately after the adoption of the system with excellent
results. Teachers soon gained higher views of their respon-
sibilities, and duties and more elevated conceptions of their
pesitlon in society. Indeed, the indications are very strong
that the days of lesson-htaring are numbered, and that teach-
ing is to supercede the drudgery of lessons " got by heart."

The living teacher is taking the place of the inanimate
Text Book.

At the close of the scholastic year, the teachers of this
County, with a portion of those of the adjoining County of
Queen Anne, met at Chestertown to organize a Teachers'
Institute.

The accommodations were poor, but the meeting was a
grand success. It was to most of the members a new thing,
bat under the admirable management of Professors Newell
and Leakin, all immediately entered into the spirit of the
work, and were inspired with an enthusiasm heretofore un-
known. Unfortunately, through the negligence of our sec-
retary, the proceedings were not prepared for publication.

A noteworthy incident occurred at this meeting. A gentle-
man who had expressed his disapprobation of the Institute,
alleging that the time of the teachers was taken up to the
detriment of the children of the schools, came in to one of
our sessions, and after hearing a lecture and witnessing the
subsequent exercises, sat down and wrote for one of our
local papers, an article, claiming that the benefit of the In-

statute to our County was incalculably great ! No pupils
from this County were entered at the Normal School during
the year, the applicants being all under age. The saving
to the County in the matter of Text-Books from the adop-
tion of the principle of uniformity, has been very large.
Mo longer are parents and guardians taxed with every change