THE AUCKLAND GRAMMAR SCHOOL

■ ANNUAL DISTRIBUTION OF

PRIZES.

The annual distribution of prizes in connection with the Auckland Grammar School took place on Saturday evening at the Choral Hall. There was a good attendance both of pupils . and friends, and it says a good deal for the interest taken in the school that the body of the hall should be half full on such a terrible night. Sir G. M. O'Rorke (chairman of the Board of Governors) presided,-and there were on the platform members of the Board, masters and mistresses of the school, and the secretary and president of the Old Boys' Association. THE HEADMASTER'S REPORT. Mr. J. W. Tibbs, headmaster, read his annual report as follows: The numbers on the school roll for 'the three terms of this year have been: For the first term—Boys, 224; girls, 131. For the second —Boys, 220; girls, 134. For the third—Boys, 212; girls, 132. The number of boys in attendance during the first term has not been reached since the year 1884. The falling off in the number of boys towards the end of the year is mainly due to the demand for cadets - from the school to fill junior positions in the various commercial offices in the city. It will be noted that the attendance on the girls' side during the three terms has been remarkably steady. The average number on the roll has been 351, and of these 129 held scholarships, or had the privilege of free education. lam in a position to report that the work of these privileged pupils has been very satisfactory, and that many of them show considerable ability, and lead us to hope that they will give a good account of themselves hereafter. I am glad to find that my appeal to parents to make some sacrifice to allow their children to enjoy fully the benefits of the education offered here, before prematurely closing their school life, has already been responded to. We have still with us as many as 13 pupils, who, at the beginning of the year, were entitled to enter a university college as matriculated students, whose parents wisely decided that they should spend another year at the school, and who, when they pass on to the Auckland College next year (as, I believe, is their present intention), will be in a position to derive a rmich higher degree of profit from that institution than would have been possible a year earlier. In enumerating the distinctions gained in the public examinations, it gives me great pleasure to report that, though last year was a remarkable one in the aniials of the school, this year has eclipsed it at every point. The examinations prescribed by the university and by the Civil Service Act are undertaken by many of our senior pupils, and honours gained in them are regarded in the light of "leaving certificates." In the contest for the junior university scholarships, four of our ten candidates gained.scholarships, and the other six all passed "with credit." In 1599 five of our boys gained scholarships, and two candidates gained credit. The victory of C. G. Aickin, Avho headed the list, we looked upon as full compensation for having one scholar less than the previous year. The school has, during the past five years, %yon 18 university scholarships—five in 1895, one in 1596, three in 1597, five in 1898, four in 1899; 12 were won by boys and six by girls. The three girls who were successful this year were Misses Tooman, Lynch and Hull. I offer a word of warning to the boys. The girls have determineed to reduce this ratio of two to one, and I the champions they have sent out this yea.r will, I think, be found to have left their mark high up in the list on, January next. The names of those who passed "with credit" are Misses, I. Robertson, M. Peacocke and H. j Northcroft; and from the boys' side i N. H. Prior, A. E. Mulgan, L. B. Camp- J bell. Of these four were under eight-1 een years of age, and have competed j a-o-ain this'year? From the list of marks published by the University Ij note that our pupils gained the fol-1 lowing places in the various streets: Latin: Aickin, 2nd; Miss Hull, 3rd. English: Miss Lynch, Ist; Aickin, 2nd. French: Miss Hull, 2nd; Miss Lynch, 3rd. Mathematics: Aickin, 4th. Chemistry: Aickin, Ist. Electricity: Aickin, Ist. Botany: Miss Lynch, Ist. Mechanics: Miss Robertson, Ist. Besides the scholars, 25 (13 boys and 12 girls) passed the ordinary test for matriculation, as against 23 last year. Threa boys also passed the medical prelimim ary, of whom one, F. A. Hanan, has entered on his career at Edinburgh, and has already gained distinction there. The Civil Service senior examination was passed by ten of our pupils (as against two last year), and of these two gained distinction, Misses Lynch and Tooman. Both how hold cadetships at Wellington, where they have also kept terms at Victoria Gob ]e°e, their names appearing in the honour lists of that institution. The junior examination was passed by 21 4 which is better than the 13 of last year, our highest candidate being third on the list. In the examination for senior district scholarships five boys, R. Ziman,' Miller, Aldridge, Osborne, McNab, and two girls, Misses Gnerson and Alexander, were successful; and S. Ziman, Hull, McClure, and Misses Potter and Graham were awarded certificates of proficiency. The name of the school is included among those that may claim to come under the operation of the Technical and Manual Instruction Act, 1900. It is, of course, well known to members of the Board that considerable attention has been paid to technical subjects in the curriculum of the school for some years past and I have rniore than once dwelt in my report on this important matter. But the passing of the Act last session seems to me to demand a further reference to it. To solid geometry, which involves the principles of projection, special attention is given; for it is the foundation upon which all mechanical drawing is based, and without it it is useless to attempt to design any mechanical work. When a fair knowledge of this subject has been gained its application is directed to the construction of drawings illustrating well-known mechanical formSs such as details of locomotives, machine tools, etc. Instruction is also given Id estimating weights and quantities «jf material from these drawings. In the workshop instruction is given in the use of tools and in the making of all the ordinary joints in common use and their application. All work is carefully set out and worked from drawings." Lathe work is included, and those boys that possess artistic ability add carving. The boy who has passed through this course will be something more than the mere amateur carpenter, "more than the handy

man about the house. He should be in a position to understand and apply the admirable articles in the technical and scientific publications of the day. If his future is to be devoted to opening up the broad acres on either side of the Main Trunk line, I. can picture his farmhouse, with up-to-date outbuildings of his own planning and erecting, himself a capable member of his Road Board, taking an almost professional interest in the public works of his district. Several boys are studying with the A'iew of taking up engineering, and are doing good work. Considerable advantage is taken of the provision made for the teaching of shorthand and bookkeeping; the standard attained in the latter subject is that pi-escribed for passing the examinations of the College of Preceptors, the Society of Arts, and the English Civil Service. Chiefly with the view of rendering more complete the commercial equipment of our boys, I have decided to make the study of German a part of the regular work of the Fifth Form. Two hours a week will be devoted to the subject; it is thought that this will be sufficient time to enable them to acquire such a knowledge of the language as will add greatly to their efficiency in the correspondence department of firms engaged in foreign trade. On the girls' sfde, an hour each week has been given up to wpoodearving in the Lower Fifth Form. With regard to the work of Girls' Drawing Classes, Mr Watkins reports as follows:—"The competitive work tor the year has brought into notice a number of exceptionally clever students, the shaded and outline drawings from the model by Misses Hanan, Gideon, Vaile, and Wildman being of an unusually high standard. Misses Clements, Kronfeld, Moore, Geddes, and D. Metcalfe deserve mention also for general excellence in the same department, and for year's work. The institution of perspective and landscape lessons from Nature among the girls of the Upper Fourth and Lower Fifth Forms has had good result, many of them showing especial aptitude for these subjects. The work in monochrome and in water-colour by the Remove girls has also been very encouraging; and during no previous year has there been greater indication of promise in all departments of drawing than at present." The games and pastimes of the year have been characterised by much vigour and enthusiasm, which I take to be a sign of a good healthy tone in the school. The Cadet Corps, under the command of Mr McCullough, is very regular at drill and efficient. The cricket and tootball seasons -were both eniinently successful; the swimming sports oil both sides showed that proficiency in the practice of swimming is becoming more general year by year, a fact which is, in my opinion, largely due to the encouragement given by the Board and by the Old Boys' Association. On Sports Day we were not favoured with the best of weather; but a large company of parents, old pupils and other friends of the school assembled to show their interest in the athletic contests; and they must have noticed that the physical training of the boys is being well cared for, for the sports were keenly contested and several school records were broken. I take this opportunity of thanking my colleagues for their hearty cooperation in our work; the thanks of the school are specially due to those members of the staff on both sides who have devoted no small part of their leisure to the cultivation of this important side of school life—l mean the physical side. To His Excellency the Governor and to Lady Ranfurly we are greatly indebted, for having restored to the school the use of Government House paddock, especially as they have not limited the enjoyment of the privilege to the time of their absence from Auckland. A school report is hardly complete without some reference to past pupils. A fair number of them are attending the Colleges of our University; and some have won high distinction at the last annual examination. Most of our old boys at Home are engaged in medical studies; one of them, R. W. Allen, has recently won the first open scholarship at Guy's Hospital. He finished his course with us in 1594, when he was first in the Sixth Form in mathematics and science, and won a University scholarship. Like most of the English and colonial schools, we have been well represented in South Africa, and have seen, with pride, our boys leave for the front; we, too, have been called upon to mourn for the fallen, for John Connell, killed in action at Rendsburg, and for Charles Arkell, of the Army Medical Corps, who died of fever at De Aar. The length of my report prevents me from entering on a survey in detail of the work of the several forms, which has been carried out on the lines of former years. I must therefore ask to be permitted to refer the Board to the published Form Lists, which show our present estimate of the work done. It is well from time to time to remind boys and girls that the result of labours at school is not to be fully measured by the winning or losing of the first or second place in a form; but that ,as Seneca, says, "non scholae sed vitae discimus." The winners of prizes, whom I shall now present to you, are but a small proportion of those who have worked faithfully, and who in the days to come will be able to look back with satisfaction on these days. lAnd I am persuaded that the great number of our boys and girls are not of those that bury their talent. It may take some even longer than their school days to find out that they possess it; but whether found now or in later years, I am sure that it will be used with profit to themselves and advantage to the State.

SIR MAURICE O'RORKE'S SPEECH. Sir Maurice O'Rorke, who was received with applause, said:—"l would first of all like to ask you to allow me to make an apology to the boys and girls of the Auckland Grammar School fgr having shortened their present school term by four days. It may be almost a crime on my part to deprive you of four days' schooling, but as it is a great pleasure to me to take part in the ceremony now being enacted, I hope you will excuse me for causing the breaking-up of the school for vacation to take place tonight instead of on Thursday next. What forced me to do this is that I propose leaving for Australia on Monday next in order that I may be an eye-witness of the great event that is to be celebrated all over Australia, and especially in Sydney, the mother of all Australian cities, on the first day of the 20th century—the federation of all Australia. You, ladies and gentlemen, and especially you who are the fond parents of pupils at this school, will, I hope, excuse me for wishing to be both at the presentation this night of the prizes at the

Grammar School and at the birthday ceremony of a new nation in Sydney on the first day of the 20th century. Speaking of this school, I may be permitted to say —and I do not say it in any vainglorious spirit, but in a spirit of deep thankfulness—that I have been connected with it as one of the governing body for 30 years, and it was nearly as difficult to get it established as it has been to get a board-ing-house attached to it. My experience of life is that everything worth having is most difficult of attainment. It took some 10 years to get this school started. Sometimes the Provincial Council was unfavourable, but generally the Superintendent blocked the way. It was premature; «funds were insufficient; primary schools were sufficient for Auckland; it might1 not succeed. Every excuse that a hostile mind or dilatory design could offer was ready in abundance, but there is nothing like perseverance, be it to start a Grammar School or a University College or even a cemetery at Onehunga. (Laughter.) At this very moment the governors of this school are in the very throes of deliberation whether one of the finest mansions in this province, one of the grandest sites in the colony, is to become the home of our boarders, or whether we shall drift along, as we have done for 30 years, without any provision of that nature, leaving our country settlers to send their sons to Wanganui, to Wellington, to Nelson, to Christchurch. 1 do hope that Monday will show that the Board has confidence in the scheme they are deliberating on, and courage to undertake it. I look back with pride on the founding of this school, and I reflect with satisfaction that when my time comes to lay down my office as a member of the Board of Governors, that Board will inevitably be largely recruited from those whose school days have been passed within the walls of the Auckland Grammar School. I have referred to Australian federation, and I think it is a. great misfortune that New Zealand did not attend the various conferences that preceded the founding of the Australian Commonwealth. New Zealand was an invited guest, and would have been an honoured guest at the Federation table, but our rulers thought proper to stand aloof, to take no part in moulding the new nation, paid no heed to the framing- of a Constitution. That may prejudicially affect the commerce and prosperity of our native or adopted country, New England of the Southern Pode. But I must turn aside from matters personal or political, and address myself more closely to the object of this meeting. I have beside me the prizes that have been selected as the rewards of talent, ambition, and industry. My warmest congratulations must be given to the prize-winners, and yet I have tender feelings for the disappointed. I hope the presentation of prizes to the successful will prove a stimulant to the unsuccessful, and that this night some of you majr resolve that though you may not mount the platform to-night, yet when this earth makes another revolution round the sun you, too, will ascend this platform, and receive the rewards of your industry and the plaudits of your schoolfellows. To the prizewinners I have to say that in selecting your prizes it has been the desire of the Board that the books should not be of ephermal nature, but that they should include the great masterpieces of English literature; for historians there are Macau lay, Froude, Gardiner, Gibbon, Napier, Strickland; biographies, Lords Roberts, Nelson, Cromwell, Wellington; navigators, Columbus and Cook; poetry, Shakespere, Milton, Byron, Moore, Scott, Burns, Tennyson; scientists, Ganot, Guillemin, Darwin, Sir Robert Ball. There are botanical; works and illustrated works. I fain would hope that these books will be, in the words of the Greek historian, to each one of you a possession for all time, to be cherished throughout yooir lives as a constant 'source of pleasure, and to be transmitted to those who shall succeed you as priceless heirlooms. I have often thought, when appearing with my colleagues on this platform, that the position of the governors of the school and the pupils of the school ought to be reversed. That the young ladies and gentlemen should be the declaimers, and that we should be the audience. Could anything be more entertaining to such an assemblage as this than to see a play of Shakespere placed on the stage? Here we could find a Romeo, there a Juliet. (Laughter). My Young Friends: It is to the universities I would like to allure you; but. if the spirit of adventure, the love of succour of the Empire from which your fathers are sprung; if you are fired with ambition to emulate the prowess and the patriotism of your fellow-colonists, who have this year dyed the burning plains of Africa with their life's blood, then let there be engraven on your hearts the words which England's greatest general of the day applied to our fellow-colo-nists in the struggle for the supremacy of our race in South Africa: "That they bore themselves as heroes on the battlefield, and comported themselves as gentlemen everywhere." Those words, "Some to discover islands far away," will touch the hearts or' those who, like myself, have come, uot as explorers, but as colonists of the islands of New Zealand, the uttermost bounds of the British Empire, the once Ultima Thule of the civilised world. In awarding you boys and girls the rewards of your talents and industry, in exhorting you to the perusal of such books as I have mentioned, in whatever walk of life your lot may be cast, remember that knowledge is power, and that a man is but what he knows; and, addressing myself to you girls, remember that in these modern days the position of womanhood is entirely changed from what it was a generation ago, that nearly all the walks of life arc thrown open to you. Woman may enter the service of the Government, become a member of the Bar, administer to suffering humanity the skill of the physician. I have watched with intense interest how the doors of office and the gates of the professions have been thrown open to you, and I from my heart congratulate you on your emancipation from the drudgery of domestic life, but I have not cultivated the acquaintance of the "new woman," still less do I sympathise with "the revolt of the daughters." But to return-to what is essential to your advancement in life, I think I may say to you too what I said to the boys, that knowledge is power, and that a woman is but what she knows with the super-added grace and tenderness that is peculiarly her own. I

cannot close my remarks without reference to those who are the most, important factors in school matters, the masters and mistresses who are charged with the duties of teaching the boys and girls of the school. Parents must feel how sacred is the dtity that the teachers owe to the youth committed to their charge. The success in life of my young friends will be largely due to those who have to instruct them and lay the foundation of that education which is to carry them through life. How great are the responsibilities of Mr. Tibbs and the several members of the teaching staff! I take myself, and so do my colleagues on the Board of Governors, our share of the responsibility that devolves upon us in providing the best masters and mistresses that our means will afford. I cannot conceive a greater wrong tha can be done to a child—boy or girl—than placing our boys and girls in the hands of an incompetent, unsympathetic teacher. By such a teacher the whole tenor of the life of a person may be blighted. How grave, then, is the responsibility that rests on masters or mistresses or the governors of this school. I feel it, to the utmost, and it is a great source of gratification to me that the position of the schoolmaster has risen. and is rising, beyond what it was half a century ago. Teaching has become a distinct and noble profession, and it is the duty of all who have the education of the people at heart to do all that lies in their power to dignify that profession, and to attract to it the best talent of the day. But if such be the responsibilities of the teachers and governors of the school, what are the responsibilities of parents? To keep constant watch over the progress made by the dearest objects of their affections —the hostages they have given to fortune —to make known in the proper quarter any shortcomings they may observe, to see that lessons are' duly prepared, and that precepts of a respectful demeaonur to their masters be duly inculcated. In the present day it has" become the habit in New Zealand to look to the Government to control and direct many of the ordinary affairs of life. It is right that the' overworking of our fellow-colo-nists should be prohibited, that the hours of labour should be regulated, that the sanitary condition of factories and workshops should be vigilantly attended to. But there is no law to abolish the duties of parents, no law to diminish the responsibilities of mothers, and is it not, admitted that cvervwhere and always mothers train the childhood of nations? Women as teachers of the young are ministering- spirits sent forth to minister in the noble cause of imparting- the elements of learning- to the youth of every nation, moulding a people's character and throwing a halo of gentler life over the hardness of the world and its ways. The rougher and coarser portion of school work is for man. the delicate and refined work for woman. (Applause.)