VOL. X., No. 12.

To the Reader:

PHILADELPHIA, PA., MARCH 24, 1894.

$1.50 A YEAR

Please read our special offers on last page of this paper.

If you will accept any of these offers and subscribe for the weekly EDUCATIONAL NEWS within sixty days, we will allow you four months' time to make payment of subscription.

If you desire we will send you the paper four weeks free on trial.

We will also send you by mail single copies of any of Raub & Co.'s books that you may wish, at half retail price if ordered within three months. This offer is good only to our subscribers. See list of books on bottom of last page of this paper.

The EDUCATIONAL NEWS will be sent as soon as subscription is received, but at these low rates books and premiums will be sent at the time payment is made.

VOL. X., No. 12.

AWEEKLY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.

PHILADELPHIA PA., MARCH 24, 1894.

EDUCATIONAL NEWS,

PUBLISHED WEEKL:

BY THE

EDUCATIONAL NEWS COMPANY,
Philadelphia, Pa.

For the EDUCATIONAL NEWS.

COMMERCIAL PAPER.

PROMISSORY NOTE.

179

180

181

$1.50 A YEAR

the element of negotiability did not attach to promissory notes at the English law until after it had attached to both foreign and domestic bills of exchange. In a celebrated English case Lord Holt decided that promissory notes were not negotiable at common law. The effect of this decision was to so disturb the financial situation that Parliament in 1705 passed a statute(3 and 4 Anne, C. 9) which provides that all notes in writing made and signed by any person whereby such person shall promise to pay to any other person, his, her, or their order, or unto bearer, any sum of 180 money mentioned in such note, shall be negotiable in like manner as bills of exchange. In the several states of the American Union three different positions have been taken; .182 183 viz. : 1. That the statute of 3 and 4 Anne is in force therein. 2. That promissory notes were negotiable independently of this statue and that Lord Holt's decision is not in force. 3. That Lord Holt's decision was correct, but that the statute of Queen Anne is not in force; the mat...186 ter being regulated by local statutes. It may be generally .187 stated that in order that a note may be negotiable as an in.189 land bill of exchange in Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky or Indiana, it must be made payable to bearer or order at a bank in that state. In Pennsylvania Statute 3 and 4 Anne is in force.

.183

..184 ...185

...190

A promissory note differs from a bill of exchange in that the latter is an order to pay money, while the former is a promise to pay. To the bill there are usually three original parties; to the note only two-the maker and the payee. The maker or drawer of a bill is not liable upon it to the payee unless the drawee has refused to honor the bill and the drawer has been given proper notice of such dishonor; but the maker of a cote is always the person primarily bo and thereby.

The following things are also necessary in order to make a note negotiable :-- 1. It must be open; i. e. not under seal,-for a sealed instrument is a covenant, or a deed; but in some states as stated in the NEWS of Feb. 24, the addition of a seal does not affect the negotiability of the instru ment to which it is attached. 2. The promise to pay must be certain and unconditional. 3. The amount to be paid must be certain, and 4, must be payable in money and in money only. 5. The note must be delivered.

A note may be payable in specific articles, goods or chattels; but such a note is not negotiable. The effect of negotiability is to cut off all equitable defences when the note or bill is in the hands of an innocent holder and thus protects such a holder. Two questions here arise: 1. What As was said in the EDUCATIONAL NEWS of February 24, is an equitable defence? 2. Who is an innocent holder?

An equitable defence is one that that does not appear on the
face of the note. Thus a note may be obtained without a
consideration, or it may be vitiated by fraud, yet, if it is
not negotiable the maker can not defend against it in the
hands of an innocent holder; for such a defence does not
appear upon the face of the instrument and there is noth-
ing therein to put the purchaser on his guard. Such a de-
fence may always be set up against a non-negotiable instru-

The only persons protected by the negotiability of
the instrument are innocent holders; and by an innocent
holder is meant one who

1. purchases the paper in good faith;

2. for a value consideration;

3. in the usual course of business;

4. before it becomes due;

5. without noticing any infirmity attaching to it.
THE FORM Of a Note.

There is no particular form required in a note. All that
is necessary is that it be an express, written promise by the
maker to pay to the payee, or order, or to bearer, a defi-
nite sum of money absolutely and at all events.

A simple form of a negotiable note follows:

Scranton, Pa., March 8, 1894.
Ninety days after date I promise to pay to the order
Thomas Jones, One Hundred Dollars.
$100.

John Smith.

deliver it. Possession is prima facie evidence of delivery
and of ownership; and the giving of a promissory note is
prima facie evidence of a settlement of all accounts be-
tween the parties.
JAS. J. H. HAMILTON,

Scranton, Pa.

For the EDUCATIONAL NEWS.
LANGUAGE.

What is the aim of a language lesson? I answer to broaden your pupils' range of thinking-and to cause them to think in a connected, definite way. The pupils, as a rule, are rather timid and backward in talking on entering school, but by a series of well planned language lessons, the power of talking freely is fully developed, and also, the manner of talking correctly. But in language work, as well as any other work, the teacher must make some special preparation. The first thing for a teacher to do, is to get thoroughly acquainted with the children and gain their confidence. Talk with the children upon familiar subjects, so as to get the range of their ideas. Find out the weight of their mental power. You may ask, "How are we to get the range of their ideas; how are we to learn their mental of power?" I would answer you by saying, give the children something to do when they enter the school. Let them see that you appreciate their efforts, their work. Praise them for what they have done. Get down on a level with the children. Become a child with them. Talk with them about the things they have at home, the cat, the dog, etc. Talk with them about the things they saw, when coming to school. Don't criticise too closely. Too close criticism causes a child to falter at the very threshold.

The words "for value received" are not essential to a note or bill. It is an old rule of law that no simple contract is binding unless it be based upon a consideration. The practice soon obtained of setting forth the consideration in the instrument itself. The next step was not to set it out in full, but to acknowledge its receipt by the use of the words "for value received." But the instrument is now held to import a consideration, and these words are no longer necessary.

INTEREST.

Notes bear interest before they are due only when they so state; but after they become due all notes bear interest. If no rate is named the legal rate of interest is understood and payable. In some states a higher rate than the legal rate may be collected if agreed upon in the note. In some states this amount is unlimited; in others a limitation is placed by law upon the rate that may be collected even by agreement.

Make all corrections for those young children by repeating yourself in correct form the incorrect expressions of the children. A child by hearing these corrected expressions from the teacher, will soon learn to use them without any direct telling. All exercises should be short and full of life. Choose some subject that the children are interested in. Go with them fishing, huckle-berrying, or on a picnic to Cedar Grove, or anything that will awaken their curiosity. E. E. B.

A forged note is absolutely void and cannot be ratified. And as delivery is essential to a note, if my undelivered note is stolen from my desk and put in circulation by the it. thief, I am not bound thereby for it is not my note until I

Chester, N. J.

For The EDUCATIONAL NEWS.

DECORATING THE SCHOOLROOM.

Decorate the schoolroom and let the children help to do

Last September, when I entered the primary room. to

which I had been elected, I saw, arrayed upon the walls, school that would, perhaps, be missing if the daily routine the identical set of wall maps that had decorated them for was all there was to which we might look forward. years. In some remote time the room had been used for Atco, N. J. CORA S. DAY. the whole school and these maps were the relics of that time. Now that it was used for the primary department, they were, of course, useless; and covered as they were with the accumulated dinginess of years, they were anything but things of beauty.

I humbly petitioned the august head of the Board for permission to remove them; and when it was granted speedily confined them to the obscurity of a closet.

A LESSON IN NUMBER.

home study when a five-year-old child came to him with a Once upon a time a teacher was sitting at his desk in his box full of wooden discs. His mother had bought them for him to play with. By some mysterious way he had learned to count ten things. She had not tried to teach him. He had not attended school. This teacher was busy Then for the decorations. First, I placed along the top studying "methods" from a book, when this live boy of the black-boards a series of original stick-laying designs, shoved a chair up to the table and poured out of his box utilizing otherwise unused space. They were arranged in something less than a peck of these wooden discs. The series of one-stick designs, two-stick designs, etc., with a teacher went on studying his book. The boy counted out view to using them in future number work. ten of these discs and placed them in a row talking to himWhen the children had become adepts in laying the de-self all the while. The teacher began to divide his attensigns in sticks on their desks, I had some of them bring tion between the book on methods and the boy who knew clean pasteboard boxes, from which I cut squares and had nothing about method. The boy placed another row with the children paste the sticks on them in the given designs. ten in it beside the first row and said, "Two tens." The When finished, these were arranged above one of the teacher here recalled the fact that when the boy completed black-boards, and formed an array that the children never the first row he did not say one ten but said ten. The boy tired of because "We made them." For the space above made another row and said three tens. He kept this up the other board I cut diamonds, circles, etc., from bright without a word from the teacher and without being concolored paper and had the older pupils arrange and paste scious that the teacher was watching him. When he had them on squares like those for the sticks. Besides these finished the tenth row, he said "Ten teus ?" and then adspecimen of their own children's own work we have pic-dressed the teacher as follows: "Ten tens, see! How many tures-lots of them; some brought by the children, a hand- is ten tens ?" The teacher, (without correcting the boy's some calendar with a picture of Grant on his horse, grammar--just think of it !) said, "One hundred." The brought by one of the boys, a lot of reproductions cut from boy immediately climbed out of his chair and ran to his the pages of a "Photographic Review," a colored picture mamma in great glee and said, "Mamma, mamma, ten tens of Columbus at the court of Spain, and a number of pic-is a hundred, ten tens is a hundred; I've got 'em on the tures sent as supplements to my educational papers. table; come and see, mamma, come!" Mamma came and Some of my boys have brought in a huge hornets' nest the little fellow was delighted. Mamma was, too. So and a "hanging bird's nest," and they are given places of was the teacher. He laid his book down and began to honor, for I am glad they appreciate the wonders and study the boy. He asked him to divide his hundred butbeauties of these common things and bring them to me. tons, as the boy called them, into two equal parts. The Just now we are making a collection of things found in boy looked a moment and put his finger down in such a the United States, the children bringing the things and I way that there were five tens on either side and said that pasting them on a large decorated square of card-board, five tens is one-half of ten tens. Where or how he learned divided into four sections-Eastern, Middle, Southern and this no one knew. The teacher touched two rows of tens, Western sections. using his thumb and fourth finger, and asked the boy to see how many two tens he could find. He soon reported five. Then the teacher told him that we call two tens a fifth of ten tens. And the boy said, "I know why. It is because it takes five of them to make ten tens." The teacher then touched one row and said, "What is this?" The boy

When the collection is finished, this will be hung on the wall and furnish material for almost unlimited language work.

All this work is so arranged as not to interfere with regular school work, and I enjoy doing it as much as

the children themselves.

the

do

said, "One ten." Why do you call it a ten?" asked the

It keeps us all out of ruts and arouses an interest in teacher. "Because it has ten buttons in it," said the boy.