it is for you that you have been honest and open.  The business is now all ended; you have done your duty; and, though you reported a little larger number than you would if you had been disposed to conceal your faults, yet you go away from school with a quiet conscience.  On the other hand, how miserable must any boy feel, if he has any nobleness of mind whatever, to go away from school to-day thinking that he has not been honest; that he has been trying to conceal his faults, and thus to obtain a credit which he did not justly deserve.  Always be honest, let the consequence be what it may.”

The reader will understand that the object of such measures is simply to secure as large a majority as possible to make voluntary efforts to observe the rule.  I do not expect that by such measures universal obedience can be exacted.  The teacher must follow up the plan after a few days by other measures for those pupils who will not yield to such inducements as these.  Upon this subject, however, I shall speak more particularly at a future time.

In my own school it required two or three weeks to exclude whispering and communication by signs.  The period necessary to effect the revolution will be longer or shorter, according to the circumstances of the school and the dexterity of the teacher; and, after all, the teacher must not hope entirely to exclude it.  Approximation to excellence is all that we can expect; for unprincipled and deceiving characters will perhaps always be found, and no system whatever can prevent their existence.  Proper treatment may indeed be the means of their reformation, but before this process has arrived at a successful result, others similar in character will have entered the school, so that the teacher can never expect perfection in the operation of any of his plans.

I found so much relief from the change which this plan introduced, that I soon took measures for rendering it permanent; and though I am not much in favor of efforts to bring all teachers and all schools to the same plans, this principle of whispering at limited and prescribed times alone seems to me well suited to universal adoption.

The following simple apparatus has been used in several schools where this principle has been adopted.  A drawing and description of it is inserted here, as by this means some teachers, who may like to try the course here recommended, may be saved the time and trouble of contriving something of the kind themselves.

The figure a a a a on the next page is a board about 18 inches by 12, to which the other parts of the apparatus are to be attached, and which is to be secured to the wall at the height of about 8 feet, and b c d c is a plate of tin or brass, 8 inches by 12, of the form represented in the drawing.  At c c, the lower extremities of the parts at the sides, the metal is bent round, so as to clasp a wire which runs from c to c, the ends