Let no one now understand me to say that such cases are to be neglected.  I admit the propriety, and, in fact, have urged the duty, of paying to them a little more than their due share of attention.  What I now condemn is the practice, of which all teachers are in danger, of devoting such a disproportionate and unreasonable degree of attention to them as to encroach upon their duties to others.  The school, the whole school, is your field, the elevation of the mass in knowledge and virtue, and no individual instance, either of dullness or precocity, should draw you away from its steady pursuit.

(6.) The teacher should guard against unnecessarily imbibing those faulty mental habits to which his station and employment expose him.  Accustomed to command, and to hold intercourse with minds which are immature and feeble compared with our own, we gradually acquire habits that the rough collisions and the friction of active life prevent from gathering around other men.  Narrow-minded prejudices and prepossessions are imbibed through the facility with which, in our own little community, we adopt and maintain opinions.  A too strong confidence in our own views on every subject almost inevitably comes from never hearing our opinions contradicted or called in question, and we express those opinions in a tone of authority, and even sometimes of arrogance, which we acquire in the school-room, for there, when we speak, nobody can reply.

These peculiarities show themselves first, and, in fact, most commonly, in the school-room; and the opinions thus formed very often relate to the studies and management of the school.  One has a peculiar mode of teaching spelling, which is successful almost entirely through the magic influence of his interest in it, and he thinks no other mode of teaching this branch is even tolerable.  Another must have all his pupils write on the angular system, or the anti-angular system, and he enters with all the zeal into a controversy on the subject, as if the destiny of the whole rising generation depended upon its decision.  Tell him that all that is of any consequence in any handwriting is that it should be legible, rapid, and uniform, and that, for the rest, it would be better that every human being should write a different hand, and he looks upon you with astonishment, wondering that you can not see the vital importance of the question whether the vertex of an o should, be pointed or round.  So in every thing.  He has his way in every minute particular—­a way from which he can not deviate, and to which he wishes every one else to conform.

This set, formal mannerism is entirely inconsistent with that commanding intellectual influence which the teacher should exert in the administration of his school.  He should work with what an artist calls boldness and freedom of touch.  Activity and enterprise of mind should characterize all his measures if he wishes to make bold, original, and efficient men.