to showing the bearing of their present studies upon their future well-being, and how to place herself in such relations with them that even her unconscious bearing shall be to them lessons and illustrations of uprightness ever more effective than the stated lecture or formal lesson, and without which the best of these are worse than worthless.

Closely allied with order and system, and perhaps their surest basis, is the habit of quiet, earnest industry.

The American boy or girl, for that-who is worth the care of looking after, is active, alert, curious, and inventive, with a desire to see and do. He is eager to know somewhat of his surroundings, quick to perceive what is of interest, ever inquiring into the reasons, the causes of things and customs; and it is for the teacher to avail herself of these currents of life, and turn them into useful channels, to give these young minds problems of true interest to solve, and to put them upon the path of progress. Their energies can not and should not be repressed, but the teacher in full sympathy with their wants and needs should be able and willing so to guide their outreaching thought as to convert their active powers into abiding motives to successful work.

The activity that is not thus guided must ever prove a disturbing element, and the best and most promising pupils become the source of confusion and discouragement. They should learn that success is not of chance, that all true excellence is the result of right effort, that work well directed wins, and that industry is the only sesame to material or spiritual wealth.

No one without a purpose in life can be happy, no one without effort a success, and in the thoughtful, welldirected effort of the pupil to the attainment of some desirable result is found the truest promise of a worthy

character-a character guarded against outward assault, and strong in a well-defined purpose of future good.

Especially in its social relations does the school offer a fruitful field for the development of much that is best in character, which the wise teacher can ill afford to ignore. Indeed, only in its social relations do many of the most important questions present themselves to the teacher's attention. It is only from the associated numbers in the school-room that the subject of truth and honor comes under the teacher's notice, that integrity and uprightness can be cultivated and deeply rooted in the very nature of the pupil, that a right impulse can be given to manly courtesy, to womanly grace, and to mutual consideration and respect, the sturdier strength of the boy more truly attempered with kindness and justice, and the finer fiber of the girl unconsciously annealed to a more ductile grace and more healthful sympathies.

We often complain, and justly, of the number of pupils to a teacher, and probably with eight or ten pupils in a class a more rapid progress might be secured in the studies of the school-room; but for the growth and development of all that is valuable in character, better sixty pupils under the sympathetic sway of the capable teacher than the paltry dozen of pampered pets and petted puppets of the exclusive and high-priced private school.

Here in the full room do we find a reason for the subdued quiet and order, without which close study is impossible and hope of progress vain. Here, too, the necessity for a controlling power, a single head, some sufficient authority, not merely to restrain and quell the restless and the wayward, but to secure the earnest and studious from unintentional interruption or interference; and here, too, we learn that mutual and willing concession is the only security for the most valued rights of all. And

here the children of the rich and the poor, the foreign born and the descendants of colonial Puritan or Cavalier, meet upon a common ground, the heir to lordly wealth often surpassed in strength and keenness of intellect by the child of poverty and toil.

What basis is here found upon which to build the barriers of caste and class? What better school for the practical study of civics, for shaping the character of the child for all the duties of a worthy, intelligent citizenship, knowing his own rights and regardful of the rights of others, and wisely mindful of both?

With a due recognition of the rights of his fellows, loyal ever to well-regulated authority, with his powers developed and trained, may we not hope for our pupils a citizenship more useful to the state than was found. among the stern Romans, and a better development of individual worth than Grecian philosophy ever sought or found? Have we not the elements of a public and private morality worthy of the respect and support of every lover of his kind? The formal, unmeaning, unexplained reading of a few disconnected verses of the Bible may be omitted. But are there not still the home, the church, the parent, the pastor, the Sunday-school? "Without note or comment" itself suggests to the thoughtful pupil some hidden danger, against which the teacher is an unsafe guide.

The religious household still has its morning devotions, after which one child goes to the store or the office, and another to the quiet, orderly school-room, strengthened in the one case as the other, we trust, by the morning consecration.

If we read the names of those who have gone out from our schools, we do not find them duplicated upon the registers of houses of correction and of prisons.

The Canadian shore may be fringed with those who, in their haste to be rich, have been faithless to their trusts; but these were educated in Christian, in sectarian colleges or schools where the Scriptures were read and prayers repeated.

Not yet in the busy ranks of life are there many to whom the Bible was an unread book in school.

The Bible to be useful must be read more thoughtfully, more intelligently, and not tossed aside without a word or look of gratitude. As an influence upon the school, if experience does not belie the fact, the morning song or hymn, with its sweet and tender sentiment upborne by the glad concord of happy voices, is far more effective in attuning the heart and preparing the thought for the cheerful and successful performance of daily duty than the bare and barren reading of a few detached, disconnected verses of even Holy Writ, and, I believe, lifts the soul nearer heaven.

As all roads lead to Rome, so from whatever point or on what line soever I proceed my thought always brings me at last to the teacher, on whose fitness and fidelity the efficiency of all these forces depends.

First of her qualifications is that wholesome personal influence, still unexplained by the philosopher, but read by the veriest child-that something which embraces the will of the new-comer, makes it subservient to her desire, and leads him unconsciously along the path of duty, and brings him into harmomy with the conditions of the school-room. It inspires him with a self-respect and pride in his school, and encourages him to the performance of otherwise irksome tasks, instead of turning him back by a cold and formal dignity to the street or the saloon.

His passions and desires, which form, as it were, the

skirmish line to the advancing column of learning and enlightenment, instead of leading him into the swamps of depression and sloughs of vice and despondency, under her wise and firm control are to lead the way over all the dangers and difficulties of life's march to assured and well-earned victory, when the better emotions and truer sentiments may partake with real pleasure of the fruits of deserved success.

Under her guidance labor becomes a pleasure, and the irksomeness of restraint takes on the garb of joyous compliance with the wishes of a trusted guide. Harshness and severity are unknown, because unneeded; censure has changed to loved counsel; and willing, earnest effort, little by little, takes the place of forced and unfruitful toil.

The teacher alone can breathe life into the exercises of the school and make effective all these means of culture and growth. Nor can she lay off the load of responsibility. From the moment she enters the school-roomeven before she enters-her influence is a power for good or evil to each and every one of the boys and girls intrusted to her care, and no moral precepts can be so efficient as her own conduct and bearing. Whether listless or alert, faithful or careless, truthful or forgetful of the right, she is still making or marring the life of them all.

The influence of a promise unperformed or an unexecuted threat no teaching can undo. A calm confidence under seeming defeat, a living hope amid all discouragements, and an unfailing charity in the face of apparent, of real guilt, should be in large store in her outfit.

Fellow-teachers, if these words of mine are of any worth, it is because they are not the product of vain imaginings, but have come from long observation and