Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1889 — Making the Hand Skilful. [ARTICLE]

Making the Hand Skilful.

It is a pity tliat the advocates of manual training cannot help quarreling over what manual training means and what is proposed by it,writes a contributor to the Globe-Democrat. Plainly, it is not teaching a trade, nor doing subsidiary to brain work; but it is making the hand skilful. It is training the hand precisely on the same principle that the brain was, and is, trained. The hand is not to be considered as a mere limb of the body, as we consider a foot, hut it is a limb evolved from a low service to a high one; it is an organ exalted, and c apable of a greater exaltation, exactly as the old brain of Dinosaurus was capable of being made into the new cerebral brain of man. Of course, a trained hand cannot work without a trained brain, and so our educators get puzzled, and wonder if, after all, mammal training is not brain training.

Texas was the only State admitted into the Union which reserved nS’ own unoccupied public domain. By wise legislation, one-half or the unsold lands were devoted to school purposes, the other half being, for a period, devoted to aiding railroads. The consequence is the St'.te has now an unexampled school lund, and railroads somewhat in excess of its demands. The Houston and Texiis Central Hallway Company, one of the first, having recovered from its financial trouble, is now prepared to sell and give title to some of its best lands in a high aud salubrious portion of the State. Its announcement in another column indicates that easy terms will be made to actual settlers.