own dinner, he ought to give it to J.J.  This motion, for the children always welcome any reasonable substitute for corporal punishment, was carried by acclamation.  When one o’clock came, and the dinner was handed over, “coram publico,” to J.J., H.S. was observed by him to be in tears, and lingering near his own dinner.  They were by this time nearly done, but the teacher was watching the result.  The tears were too much for J.J., who went to H.S., threw his arms round his neck, told him not to cry, but to sit down and take half.  This invitation was of course accepted by H.S., who manifested a great inferiority of character to the other, and furnished an example of the blindness of the unjust to the justice of retribution, which they always feel to mere revenge and cruelty.  He could not bear to see J.J. even sharing his dinner, and told him with bitterness that he would tell his mother.  “Weel, weel!” said the generous child, “I’ll gin y’d a’ back again.”  Of course the teacher interfered to prevent this gross injustice, and in the afternoon made their school-fellows perfectly aware of the part each had acted.  It is not easy to render a character like H.S. liberal, but a long course of such practice, for precept is impotent in such cases, might modify what in after life would have turned out a selfish, unjust, and unsocial character.

This selfish principle it is the great object of moral training to combat against.  We may trace almost all the misery in the world to it; and until it ceases to exist to the extent which it now does, little can be done to accomplish any good or great purpose.  But lessons like the above, and received into the infant mind when in a receptive state, will, if proper advantage be taken of their occurrence, prove in the hands of the Almighty a powerful engine for the removal of selfishness; and we know of no method so effectual to accomplish this object as the drawing infants into societies, which is done only in infant schools.

The following anecdote, bearing on the same subject, came under the observation of the author of this work, very early in his labour for the extension of his system.  He gives it here in the same words as he communicated it to a friend at the time of its occurrence.

A few days since I went to the Boston Street school; the children were in the gallery, and the moment I entered, they rose to receive me.  When the school was over, the children came around me, as they usually do, saying, When will you come again? and so on.  I told them I could not tell, but that I would come as soon as I could.  This answer would not satisfy them, and I talked to them until near six o’clock in the evening.  One little girl, about four years old, kept looking stedfastly at me the whole time, not letting a single word or gesture escape her notice.  At last I finished my observations, and desired the children to go.  The infant in question immediately took hold of my hand, and said, “We shall never