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But at your daily mount of your hobby-horse, take not your way down the crowded street, and through the thronging mart, nor over the choice flower-beds and fragrant exotics of your friends; but rather turn aside into the quiet lane, or the unfrequented country road, or, still better, off for a free stretch over the wide, open prairie, where, with tossing arms and expanding chest, you can shout forth your happiness, till with loud-answering echo, the solitary places shall be made glad with your presence.

Still onward till your beast and yourself are weary, and returning, see that he is well groomed and stalled, and in due time properly fed, in preparation for another day, and it may be the coming age will raise to you and it a monument.

We conclude, then, that leaving to the philosopher the abstruse questions of thought, and without trenching upon the beliefs or prejudices of any respectable portion of society, we have in our public schools the most certain and most efficient agencies for the moral culture of the young; the habit of quiet order, the diligent industry, the systematic method, and above all, or rather the pledge and security for all, the generous, the disciplined, the cultured, the ever-progressive teacher, one whom we would gladly receive into our homes as companions, and as guides and guardians of our children.

In the mutual rights and duties of the family and social relations, the rights of the child, we believe, are paramount. If the parent or the State has a claim upon. the child for devotion and service, much more has the child, as the involuntary partner, a moral right to be educated for these relations. And with the truer aims and better methods of to-day, may we not fairly hope for an ever-increasing recognition and fuller satisfaction of this, his supreme right?

II.

THE CHARACTER OF THE TEACHER.

It is not so long ago but you may almost count the years on the fingers of one hand since society was suddenly startled from its sense of serenity, as by thunder from a clear sky.

A great man who had spent his life in giving instruction had died, and upon reading his will it was found that he had truthfully signed himself, "Louis Agassiz, Teacher."

The provisions of the will were too important to have it set aside on the ground of insanity, and therefore the wide republic was called upon to contribute for a memorial to the self-forgetfulness of the man who, in the exercise of a sound mind, could calmly write himself 99 Teacher.'

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And this is not a solitary expression of a large public sentiment. In all English literature down to one of the last magazine novels of the present editor of "The Atlantic," the schoolmaster has been regarded as a legitimate object of ridicule.

"Tom Brown at Rugby" alone in literature has shown that the schoolmaster may be a man, noble, scholarly, humane, gentle, in the best sense of the word; and that the school-boy, instead of being his natural enemy and providential tormentor, may become his loving disciple and most devoted friend.

We need not be careful to deny that there have been, and still are, some sufficient reasons for these abounding views, if from their caricatures, satires, and flippant pleasantries we may be led to discover the weak points in our character and work, and to learn how to come nearer

that high ideal which we cherish and to which, with greater or less earnestness, we all aspire-how we may slough off the old follies and foibles which have gathered around the names of schoolmaster and pedagogue and stand among the intelligent and refined with the honor and esteem which should clothe the name of teacher. For what business or profession calls for a deeper insight, wiser methods, or more delicate and skillful treatment, or is more important to society, than that of quickening the intellect and developing and molding the character of those who, as men and women, are so soon to control all our interests? It may be true that all these little ones have their natural and hereditary traits, which in a deeper sense form their characters, and which may not be changed or obliterated; but the possible outcomes of these, as the result of the teacher's influence, may show a difference as wide as the universe.

And could the practical, earnest men and women accurately measure the results-could we take account of stock, and compute percentages of profit and loss in mind and morals, as we can in hardware and dry-goods and groceries-our successes or failures would meet with other return than taunt and gibe, and the study of the columns of statistics in our reports would not end with the proof-reader.

This school-keeping of ours is not a makeshift, a catchpenny device, a means for tiding over an unforeseen bar in our business career, a ready resort from the tedium of housekeeping, a flirtation with small literature, a free fountain by the wayside, where the tired traveler may slake his thirst and pass on, but a high calling, where, if anywhere, are required intellectual attainments, an active intelligence, tact, special training, and that well-balanced selfpoise which we sometimes call manhood and womanhood.

Nowhere is the waif and estray of fortune and of life so out of place as in the school-room, and nowhere as in the school may one contribute to the welfare of his kind, and see the result of cheerful, hearty, unwearied welldoing; and nowhere is there greater need of a healthful, harmonious, and ever- widening growth in mind and character.

It is said that we are so unfortunate as not to be brought in contact with those of our own age, our equals or superiors in maturity of thought and in acquirements, from association with whom we might strengthen our reason and judgment, sharpen our wit, and enlarge our stock of information, but must bring ourselves down to the comprehension of the immature and the ignorant.

Unlike those in other professions, too, who may push their inquiries into the higher and broader fields of thought and fancy, or penetrate those deeps where fathomline has never reached, we are to teach merely those simple elements and truths which are assumed to be the common property of all, which we ourselves may have taught a hundred times, till the very wheels of thought have become mired and clogged in the little ruts themselves have made.

Nor does our school life take hold upon the active and ever-multiplying industries of the day, which fill the coffers of the rich, or which surround with comforts and luxuries, or crown with office and honor the self-seeking and the ambitious.

And from the very nature and conditions of our work we may not wisely engage in the partisan and sectarian strifes and discussions which are the especial birthright of a people who are but even now beginning to realize the full power of free thought and free speech, by which their destiny is to be wrought out.

We are also each but a member of a great system, subject to its laws, with no opportunity, like the merchant, the banker, and the railroad magnate, by wiser forethought, larger enterprise, and broader combinations, to reap that richer harvest to ourselves of profit and power which comes of well-directed, successful effort.

We may not so often hear our deeds heralded to the public ear in noisy huzzas; but the fault is ours if in the hearts of the wise and good the name of teacher is not held in honor.

There is a way of teaching, and sometimes by earnest teachers, too, that is narrowing and belittling, and an educational literature that is its most faithful ally.

The pictures of a Goldsmith and a Scott, of an Irving and a Dickens, present features of a type of schoolmasters in which we can detect the lineaments of a species not yet wholly extinct; but let us hope they may be found in the near future only by the fossil-hunter in the dense jungles of ignorance which the light of the age has not pierced, or imbedded in the quagmires of superstition which the ingenuity of science has not spanned.

Be it that we have to do with children and youth, with those whose hungry hearts are not yet sated, nor their restless feet grown weary; whose lisping lips and tripping tongues have not become shaped to the hard phrase of an all-grasping greed, or familiar with the bewildering jargon of boards of trade; on whose sweet senses pure pleasures have not palled, nor the fair fruits of folly yielded their full bitterness; and to whom dull drudgery has not come in the attractive guise of that divinity of labor through whom we can conquer all things; that their sacred instincts have not been so insulted and trampled upon by stupidity and prejudice as to refuse longer to act as guides to what their nature

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