Above all things, the true teacher should avoid recast. ing everything in the mould of his own egotism. Deal ing mostly with young and immature minds, he is in continual danger of overestimating his own powers. Seldom questioned in his assertions, he is peculiarly liable to become dogmatic and opinionated. Everybody knows of pedantic pedagogues whose conceit is insufferable and ineffable. They look wiser than it is possible for any mor tal to become. They gain credit, like Wouter Van Twiller, for knowing a vast deal by saying nothing at all. The egotistical teacher reverses the old maxim "All men know more than one man so that it reads "One man knows more than all men,” he himself being that one man. But the true teacher will not dream his life away, like a Hindoo god, in contemplating his own perfections.

It is often said that teaching school belittles a man and Sours a woman. It may be so; it sometimes is so; but not from any law of nature. It can never be true of any teacher made alive by keeping his intellectual and spiritual faculties and emotions in healthful play. "The orig inal and proper sources of knowledge," says Blackie," are not books, but life, experience, personal thinking, feeling, and acting." These sources are open to the teacher all his life. By imparting knowledge he enriches himself, and the freshness of childhood becomes to him a fountain of youth. "All really superior teachers," says Mr. Philbrick, "are every day growing better." "The teacher," says Mr. William Russell, " is himself a primary observer, authority, and reporter in the science of mind. His work is that of a living philosopher in act.”

Aside from the course of general reading which every teacher ought to pursue, there must be some regular study

of the science and art of teaching. For general principles in education, let him read the works of Herbert Spencer; for rugged practical suggestions, Bain and Huxley; for enthusiasm, the life and works of Horace Mann. He should peruse all such good books on teaching as those of Russell, Page, Phelps, Hart, G. B. Emerson, Wickersham, and Orcutt; and also all the school reports he can get; and all the educational journals he can afford to pay for. Let him critically examine all new text-books in the various branches of study; he will glean some new method from each one. He ought to attend teachers' conventions, insti tutes, and associations, and to take part in the proceedings. The original thinkers, the discoverers, and inventors may be few; but the efficient workers are many, whose mission is to aid the progress of the race by earnest, skilful, intelligent teaching. "Be ashamed to die," said Horace Mann, "until you have won some victory for humanity."

VII. TEACHERS' ASSOCIATIONS.

It is no wonder that the solitary teacher in some rural district, surrounded by the protoplasm of humanity, his labors unappreciated, his motives misunderstood, his services half paid-it is no wonder that he sometimes becomes moody, loses his enthusiasm, and imagines that the sky is only a vast concave blackboard upon which he is doomed to work out the problem of a bare subsistence. He needs the pleasant intercourse of professional gatherings to make the heavens brighten with the stars of hope and glow with the aurora of enthusiasm. As well expect a hermit on a desolate island to advance in civilization as to suppose that an isolated teacher can rise far above his surroundings. Association is the motive power of prog

ress in civilization, science, and art. The world's indus trial expositions are dignifying mechanics and artisans. Farmers hold their state or district or county fairs for the purpose of improving their live-stock: they organize as "Grangers" to improve themselves socially and politically. Printers, carpenters, machinists, and laborers, all have their societies and trades-unions for defence and offence. The lawyers, the doctors, the dentists, the clergy, the Masons, the Odd-fellows, all have their societies for charitable or protective purposes.

If teachers would exert any marked influence, they must wield it through the consolidated power of organized societies, associations, conventions, and institutes.

VIII. EDUCATIONAL POWER.

The true teacher must have the faith of martyrs. In the limited horizon of the schoolroom, he can dimly see only the beginning of the effects of his teaching upon his pupils. The solid results, the building-up of character, the creative power of motives, become evident only in the work of a lifetime in the wider circle of the world. Hence the power of the teacher, like that of the silent and invisible forces of nature, is only feebly realized.

I once visited a quartz mine of fabulous richness. Deep in the bowels of the earth, rough miners were blasting out the gold-bearing rock; above, the powerful mill was crushing the white quartz with its iron teeth. In the office, piles of yellow bars, ready to be sent to the mint to be poured into the channels of trade, showed the immediate returns of wisely invested capital and well-directed labor. An hour later, I stepped into a public school, not half a mile distant, where a hundred children were at work on

their lessons. What does the school yield, I asked, on the investment of money by the State? The returns of the mine are made monthly, in solid bullion; the school returns will be made in the far future, and they cannot be expressed in dollars.

I go out from my school daily into the crowded streets of a great commercial city. I hear everywhere the hum of industry, and see the stir of business. The results of business are solid and tangible; but when I go back to my classes, after witnessing the mighty play of industrial forces, it seems as if the teacher were only a looker-on in the bustling life around. But when I pause to consider that intelligence is the motive power of trade; that the steamship is navigated by means of science, and is built as a triumph of art; that science surveyed the converg ing lines of railroads, and that skill runs the trains freight ed with the products of industry and art, then I begin to perceive the connection between schools and the material results of civilization. I realize that the life of a nation is made up of the mothers that guard the homes, and the men who drive the plough, build the ships, run the mills, work the mines, construct the machinery, print the papers, shoulder the musket, cast the ballots; and it is for all these that the public schools have done, and are now doing, their beneficent work.

IX. THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM.

"Whatever you would have appear in the life of a nation you must first put into the schools," holds true preeminently in a republic. Our free-school system has its shortcomings and its defects; but, taken as a whole, it is the broadest and the best ever organized. It is the duty

of every true teacher to strive to remedy its defects, and never to submit to them as incurable. When taxes are high and times are hard, the school system will be subject to a running fire of criticism all along the line; but only timid and despairing souls are frightened into the belief that the foundations of society are breaking up on account of over-education in the common-schools. Neither representatives of the caste of Capital nor the caste of Culture can convince the American people that vice, crime, idleness, poverty, social discontent, are the legitimate results of an elementary education among the workers of society, or that the schoolmaster is a public enemy. The sentiment of most Americans is that of Daniel Webster, who once said, "If I had as many sons as old Priam, I would send them all to the public schools." If our schools fail to meet the needs of changing social conditions, the kind and quality, not the extent, of education must be changed. Neither the free high-school nor the free state university must be lopped off. "No system of education," says Huxley, "is worthy of the name unless it creates a great educational ladder with one end in the gutter and the other in the university."

It is only by means of skilled labor, wisely and intelligently directed, that a people can become or can remain permanently prosperous and happy; it is only by means of intelligent and honest voters that law and liberty can be preserved and maintained; and it is only by means of a still more complete education of all classes that humanity can rise into a higher type of social evolution. There is no slavery so oppressive as that of ignorance.