he can, even if they are not entirely reasonable, and, while he endeavors to elevate the standard and correct the opinions prevailing among his employers by any means in his power, to aim at doing it gently, and in a tone and manner suitable to the relation he sustains—­in a word, let him skillfully avoid the dangers of his navigation, not obstinately run his ship against a rock on purpose on the ground that the rock has no business to be there.

This is the spirit, then, with which these preliminary inquiries in regard to the patrons of the school ought to be made.  We come now to a second point.

2.  It will assist the young teacher very much in his first day’s labors if he takes measures for seeing and conversing with some of the older or more intelligent scholars on the day or evening before he begins his school, with a view of obtaining from them some acquaintance with the internal arrangements and customs of the school.  The object of this is to obtain the same kind of information with respect to the interior of the school that was recommended in respect to the district under the former head.  He may call upon a few families, especially those which furnish a large number of scholars for the school, and make as many minute inquiries of them as he can respecting all the interior arrangements to which they have been accustomed, what reading-books and other text-books have been used, what are the principal classes in all the several departments of instruction, and what is the system of discipline, and of rewards and punishments, to which the school has been accustomed.

If, in such conversations, the teacher should find a few intelligent and communicative scholars, he might learn a great deal about the past habits and condition of the school, which would be of great service to him.  Not, by any means, that he will adopt and continue these methods as a matter of course, but only that a knowledge of them will render him very important aid in marking out his own course.  The more minute and full the information of this sort is which he thus obtains, the better.  If practicable, it would be well to make out a catalogue of all the principal classes, with the names of those individuals belonging to them who will probably attend the new school, and the order in which they were usually called upon to read or recite.  The conversation which would be necessary to accomplish this would of itself be of great service.  It would bring the teacher into an acquaintance with several important families and groups of children under the most favorable circumstances.  The parents would see and be pleased with the kind of interest they would see the teacher taking in his new duties.  The children would be pleased to be able to render their new instructor some service, and would go to the school-room on the next morning with a feeling of acquaintance with him, and a predisposition to be pleased.  And if by chance any family should