before they go into their school, what sort of beings boys and girls are, and any ordinary case of youthful delinquency or dullness does not surprise them.  I do not mean that they treat such cases with indifference or neglect, but that they expect them, and are prepared for them.  Such a teacher knows that boys and girls are the materials he has to work upon, and he takes care to make himself acquainted with these materials, just as they are.  The other class, however, do not seem to know at all what sort of beings they have to deal with, or, if they know, do not consider.  They expect from them what is not to be obtained, and then are disappointed and vexed at the failure.  It is as if a carpenter should attempt to support an entablature by pillars of wood too small and weak for the weight, and then go on, from week to week, suffering anxiety and irritation as he sees them swelling and splitting under the burden, and finding fault with the wood instead of taking it to himself; or as if a plowman were to attempt to work a hard and stony piece of ground with a poor team and a small plow, and then, when overcome by the difficulties of the task, should vent his vexation and anger in laying the blame on the ground instead of on the inadequate and insufficient instrumentality which he had provided for subduing it.

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It is, of course, one essential part of a man’s duty, in engaging in any undertaking, whether it will lead him to act upon matter or upon mind, to become first well acquainted with the circumstances of the case, the materials he is to act upon, and the means which he may reasonably expect to have at his command.  If he underrates his difficulties, or overrates the power of his means of overcoming them, it is his mistake—­a mistake for which he is fully responsible.  Whatever may be the nature of the effect which he aims at accomplishing, he ought fully to understand it, and to appreciate justly the difficulties which lie in the way.

Teachers, however, very often overlook this.  A man comes home from his school at night perplexed and irritated by the petty misconduct which he has witnessed, and been trying to check.  He does not, however, look forward and endeavor to prevent the occasions of such misconduct, adapting his measures to the nature of the material upon which he has to operate, but he stands, like the carpenter at his columns, making himself miserable in looking at it after it occurs, and wondering what to do.

“Sir,” we might say to him, “what is the matter?”

“Why, I have such boys I can do nothing with them.  Were it not for their misconduct, I might have a very good school.”

“Were it not for their misconduct?  Why, is there any peculiar depravity in them which you could not have foreseen?”

“No; I suppose they are pretty much like all other boys,” he replies, despairingly; “they are all hair-brained and unmanageable.  The plans I have formed for my school would be excellent if my boys would only behave properly.”