Look at that teacher, and consider for a moment his condition.  He began to teach when he was twenty years of age, and now he is forty.  Between the ages of fifteen and twenty he made a vigorous effort to acquire such an education as would fit him for these duties.  He succeeded, and by these efforts he raised himself from being a mere laborer, receiving for his daily toil a mere daily subsistence, to the respectability and the comforts of an intellectual pursuit.  But this change once produced, he stops short in his progress.  Once seated in his desk, he is satisfied, and for twenty years he has been going through the same routine, without any effort to advance or to improve.  He does not reflect that the same efforts, which so essentially altered his condition and prospects at twenty, would have carried him forward to higher and higher sources of influence and enjoyment as long as he should continue them.  His efforts ceased when he obtained a situation as teacher at fifty dollars a month, and, though twenty years have glided away, he is now exactly what he was then.

There is probably no employment whatever which affords so favorable an opportunity for personal improvement—­for steady intellectual and moral progress, as that of teaching.  There are two reasons for this: 

First, there is time for it.  With an ordinary degree of health and strength, the mind can be vigorously employed at least ten hours a day.  As much as this is required of students in many literary institutions.  In fact, ten hours to study, seven to sleep, and seven to food, exercise, and recreation, is perhaps as good an arrangement as can be made; at any rate, very few persons will suppose that such a plan allows too little under the latter head.  Now six hours is as much as is expected of a teacher under ordinary circumstances, and it is as much as ought ever to be bestowed; for, though he may labor four hours out of school in some new field, his health and spirits will soon sink under the burden, if, after his weary labors during the day in school, he gives up his evenings to the same perplexities and cares.  And it is not necessary.  No one who knows any thing of the nature of the human mind, and who will reflect a moment on the subject, can doubt that a man can make a better school by expending six hours labor upon it with alacrity and ardor, than he can by driving himself on to ten.  Every teacher, therefore, who is commencing his work, should begin with the firm determination of devoting only six hours daily to the pursuit.  Make as good a school, and accomplish as much for it as you can in six hours, and let the rest go.  When you come from your school-room at night, leave all your perplexities and cares behind you.  No matter what unfinished business or unsettled difficulties remain, dismiss them till another sun shall rise, and the hour of duty for another day shall come.  Carry no school-work home with you, and do not even talk of your school-work at home.