Professor Huntington's View.

apostasy nor special accession to depravity over night has revolutionized their natures; no comparing out of doors has banded them into a league of rebellion. Yet the demoniacal possession of irritability has somehow crept into the room, and taken unconditional lease of the premises. You would think it was there before the first visible arrival. The ordinary laws of unity have been suddenly bewitched; the whole school is one organized obstruction; the scholars are half-unconscious incarnations of disintegration and contraposition,-inverted divisors engaged in universal self-multiplication.

"How is such a state of things to be met? not, I think you will agree, by direct issue; not point blank. You may tighten your discipline, but that will not blind the volatile essence of confusion. You may ply the usual energies of your administration, but resistance is abnormal. You may flog, but every blow uncovers the needle-points of fresh stings. You may protest and supplicate, and scold and argue, inveigh and insist; the demon is not exorcised, nor even hit, but is only distributed through fifty fretty and fidgety forms. You will encounter the mischief successfully when you encounter it indirectly. What is wanted is, not a stricter sovereignty, but a new spirit. The enemy is not to be confronted, but diverted. That audible rustle through the room comes of a moral snarl, and no harder study, no closer physical confinement, no intellectual dexterity, will disentangle it. Half your purpose is defeated if the scholars even find out that you are

Plans suggested.

worried. The angel of peace must descend so softly, that his coming shall not be known, save as the benediction of his presence spreads order, like a smile of light, through the place.

“If a sudden, skilful change of the ordinary arrangements and exercises of the day takes the scholars, as it were, off their feet; if an unexpected narrative, or a fresh lecture on an unfamiliar theme, kept ready for such an emergency, is sprung upon their good-will; if a sudden resolving of the body into a volunteer corps of huntsmen on the search of some etymological research, the genealogy of a custom, or the pedigree of an epithet, surprises them into an involuntary interest; or, in a younger company, if music is made the Orphean minister of taming savage dispositions again, then your oblique and unconscious tuition has wrought the very charm that was wanted; the room is ventilated of its restless contagion, and the furies are fled.

"Or if, as is more than probable, the disorder was in the teacher himself; if the petulance of the school all took its origin in the disobedience of some morbid mood in the master's own mind or body, and only ran over, by sympathetic transmission, upon the benches, so that he saw it first in its reflection there, — of what use to assail the insubordination by a second charge out of the same temper? His only remedy is to fall back on the settled spiritual laws of his own being. He must try to escape out of the special disturbance into the general armony; he must retreat, in this emergency of

Loud Talking.

temptation, into those resources of character, principle, affection, provided by the previous and normal disposition of his soul. This he will achieve by some such process as that just specified, displacing the ground of a direct and annoying conflict by new scenery, and rather leaping up out of the battle with foes so mean, than staying to fight it out on their level."

Talk not Much nor Loud. It is a very common error with young teachers, that they talk too much and too loud and wherever you meet with one of these garrulous and noisy teachers, you will be sure to find a disorderly school. Let us call at two schools and notice the difference. Here is a school of fifty pupils, kept by Miss Matilda Captious Fussy. The pupils are nearly all untidy in appearance, inattentive to lessons, disorderly, and noisy,whispering, and constantly asking unimportant questions of the teacher. It is a sort of "Bedlam let loose." But the children are not the only actors. Listen to the teacher, who, in loud and petulant tones, and in rapid succession, thus speaks:-"We must have less noise, scholars." "You are the worst set of children I ever saw." "Sit down, Mary." "John, did n't I tell you not to whisper?" "Susan, what are you doing?" "Sarah, I've told you twenty times that you must n't look out of the window, and you don't mind one word I say." "Peter, did n't I tell you I should punish you if you did that again? You'll get it by and by."

66

The Contrast.

Thomas, what are you out of your seat for? If you don't mind better, I shall punish you." And thus it continues through the livelong day,-the teacher noisily issuing meaningless orders and threats, the pupils hearing them as they would the whistling winds. The room is unswept and in disorder; the teacher, slovenly in her personal appearance, and unlovely and forbidding in look and manner. All is discord, All is discord,-no discipline, no true teaching, no good habits. The classes are called upon to recite without any seeming regard to time or manner; they move noisily and dilatorily to the recitation seat; their answers are indistinct, and mostly imperfect; there is an entire heartlessness and heedlessness about every exercise and every effort.

We have stopped long enough,-let us pass along. Here we come to another school, of the same size, kept by Miss Mary Cheerful Method. We enter, and are greeted by the teacher's pleasant smile, welcoming us to her school. She looks pleasant and happy; the room is a model of neatness and order; the pupils look cheerful and industrious, each earnestly attending to his lessons. There is no whispering, no useless questioning, no confusion; cheerful quietness and well-ordered industry meet the eye on every hand. The teacher says but little, and every remark is made in that pleasant and subdued tone which is sure to be heard and regarded. "The still, small voice" is readily heard, and promptly obeyed. When the classes are called to recite, they

Prompt Obedience.

take their places with alacrity, and without noise; , and, as we might expect, the lessons are well committed and distinctly recited. It is in all respects a pleasant and well-managed school. And do you not see that, in each school, as was the teacher, so were the pupils? I trust you have learned a useful lesson from these visits, and that you will not hesitate which of the two to take as your model.

Insist on Prompt and Exact Obedience. - Be sure that your requirements are reasonable and right, and be satisfied with nothing short of an implicit, exact, and prompt obedience to them. There is an unwilling, hesitating compliance with requisitions, which is little better than downright disobedience. Indeed, it is often more annoying, from the difficulty of meeting it. Positive and direct refusal to obey orders you know how to deal with ; but a half-way obedience, a sort of attempt on the part of the pupil to compromise by meeting you half-way, may sometimes seem to lack definiteness. But really it has point, and must be met without hesitation. Early, then, impress upon the minds of your pupils that you make no difference between a direct act of disobedience and obedience reluctantly and sullenly rendered. In some instances the latter may be the worse.

Never promise what you cannot perform, nor that which it would be Wrong or Unreasonable to perform. — Very young pupils will readily discover