SEEING and feeling are two senses which are more important in aiding to a knowledge of our surroundings than any others, and yet their education is generally neglected until the possessor begins to learn something of mechanics. By mechanics in this connection is intended any attempt to contrive, put together, manufacture, or change by manipulation, so that a woman who contrives and fashions a dress out of the unformed and plain material may be a mechanic. The use of mechanical tools cannot be begun too early in life, whether the pupil is to be a practical mechanic or to follow some other calling—there are few vocations that do not demand for success some practical knowledge of mechanics. “The whittling Yankees” possibly owe much of their undisputed position as inventors and good mechanics to the habit of using a pocket-knife. A very prominent inventor and superior mechanic recently remarked that the bent of his taste as a mechanic was undoubtedly given by his school-master, who was a carpenter and joiner, and who worked at his trade in summer and taught the district school in winter. If a boy did not possess a foot rule, he made one for him from a shingle, or constructed an inch scale. The foot rule and a pocket knife he considered necessary to a school-boy’s outfit, and he encouraged his pupils to estimate dimensions by the eye and then verify them by measurement. Wind-wheels and water-mills were parts of the pedagogue’s training, and the click-clack of one or the other could be heard all about the school-house and on the borders of the brook in an adjoining field. Vanes cut from pine boards, toy ships, bird houses, bows and arrows, pudding sticks, and most of the toys used by boys forty years ago were made by the school-master’s boys under his direction. To-day, besides the prolific inventor named, there are, one superintendent of a railroad company, one bridge builder, one superintendent of a large manufactory, and two architects to be counted from memory who probably received their bent for mechanics from the carpenter school-master. All these lead lives of usefulness—they are producers, adding to the wealth and comfort of the country and the people—and nothing in their mechanical education makes them less valuable as members of society. One of our most distinguished pulpit orators was a blacksmith, and many men who are noted for their eminence in literature, divinity, law, medicine, and as educators, have had a mechanical training.—Presbyterian Banner.