(4.) There should be a great difference made between the measures which you take to prevent wrong, and the feelings of displeasure which you express against the wrong when it is done.  The former should be strict, authoritative, unbending; the latter should be mild and gentle.  Your measures, if uniform and systematic, will never give offense, however powerfully you may restrain and control those subject to them.  It is the morose look, the harsh expression, the tone of irritation and fretfulness, which is so unpopular in school.  The sins of childhood are by nine tenths of mankind enormously overrated, and perhaps none overrate them more extravagantly than teachers.  We confound the trouble they give us with their real moral turpitude, and measure the one by the other.  Now if a fault prevails in school, one teacher will scold and fret himself about it day after day, until his scholars are tired both of school and of him; and yet he will do nothing effectual to remove it.  Another will take efficient and decided measures, and yet say very little on the subject, and the whole evil will be removed without suspending for a moment the good-humor and pleasant feeling which should prevail in school.

The expression of your displeasure on account of any thing that is wrong will seldom or never do any good.  The scholars consider it scolding; it is scolding; and though it may, in many cases, contain many sound arguments and eloquent expostulations, it operates simply as a punishment.  It is unpleasant to hear it.  General instruction must indeed be given, but not general reproof.

(5.) Feel that in the management of the school you are under obligation as well as the scholars, and let this feeling appear in all that you do.  Your scholars wish you to dismiss school earlier than usual on some particular occasion, or to allow them an extra holiday.  Show by the manner in which you consider and speak of the question that your main inquiry is what is your duty.  Speak often of your responsibility to your employers—­not formally, but incidentally and naturally, as you will speak if you feel this responsibility.

It will assist very much, too, in securing cheerful, good-humored obedience to the regulations of the school, if you extend their authority over yourself.  Not that the teacher is to have no liberty from which the scholars are debarred; this would be impossible.  But the teacher should submit, himself, to every thing which he requires of his scholars, unless it is in cases where a different course is necessary.

Suppose, for instance, a study-card, like the one described in a preceding chapter, is made so as to mark the time of recess and of study.  The teacher, near the close of recess, is sitting with a group of his pupils around him, telling them some story.  They are all interested, and they see he is interested.  He looks at his watch, and shows by his manner that he is desirous of finishing what he is saying, but