The teacher who tries such an experiment as this will find at such a juncture an expression of fixed and pleasant attention upon every countenance in school.  All will be intent, all will be interested.  Boys love order, and system, and acting in concert, and they will obey with great alacrity such commands as these if they are good-humoredly, though decidedly expressed.

The teacher observed in one part of the room a hand raised, indicating that the boy wished to speak to him.  He gave him liberty by pronouncing his name.

“I have no pencil,” said the boy.

A dozen hands all around him were immediately seen fumbling in pockets and desks, and in a few minutes several pencils were reached out for his acceptance.

The boy looked at the pencils and then at the teacher; he did not exactly know whether he was to take one or not.

“All those boys,” said the teacher, pleasantly, “who have taken out pencils, may rise.

“Have these boys done right or wrong?”

“Right;” “Wrong;” “Right,” answered their companions, variously.

“Their motive was to help their class-mate out of his difficulties; that is a good feeling, certainly.”

“Yes, sir, right;” “Right.”

“But I thought you promised me a moment ago,” replied the teacher, “not to do any thing unless I commanded it.  Did I ask for pencils?”

A pause.

“I do not blame these boys at all in this case; still, it is better to adhere rigidly to the principle of exact obedience when numbers are acting together.  I thank them, therefore, for being so ready to assist a companion, but they must put their pencils away, as they were taken out without orders.”

Now such a dialogue as this, if the teacher speaks in a good-humored, though decided manner, would be universally well received in any school.  Whenever strictness of discipline is unpopular, it is rendered so simply by the ill-humored and ill-judged means by which it is attempted to be introduced.  But all children will love strict discipline if it is pleasantly, though firmly maintained.  It is a great, though very prevalent mistake, to imagine that boys and girls like a lax and inefficient government, and dislike the pressure of steady control.  What they dislike is sour looks and irritating language, and they therefore very naturally dislike every thing introduced or sustained by means of them.  If, however, exactness and precision in all the operations of a class and of the school are introduced and enforced in the proper manner, that is, by a firm, but mild and good-humored authority, scholars will universally be pleased with them.  They like to see the uniform appearance, the straight line, the simultaneous movement.  They like to feel the operation of system, and to realize, while they are at the school-room, that they form a community, governed by fixed and steady laws, firmly but kindly administered.  On the other hand, laxity of discipline, and the disorder which will result from it, will only lead the pupils to contemn their teacher and to hate their school.