“in the vulgar tongue” which cannot be misunderstood, and example is not resented unless it seems self-conscious and presented of set purpose.  The one thing necessary is to be that which we ought to be, and that is to say, in other words, that the fundamental virtue in teaching children is a great and resolute sincerity.  Sincerity is a difficult virtue to practise and is too easily taken for granted.  It has more enemies than appear at first sight.  Inertness of mind, the desire to do things cheaply, dislike of mental effort, the tendency to be satisfied with appearances, the wish to shine, impatience for results, all foster intellectual insincerity; just as, in conduct, the wish to please, the spirit of accommodation and expediency, the fear of blame, the instinct of concealment, which is inborn in many girls, destroy frankness of character and make people untrue who would not willingly be untruthful.  Yet even truthfulness is not such a matter of course as many would be willing to assume.  To be inaccurate through thoughtless laziness in the use of words is extremely common, to exaggerate according to the mood of the moment, to say more than one means and cover one’s retreat with “I didn’t mean it,” to pull facts into shape to suit particular ends, are demoralizing forms of untruthfulness, common, but often unrecognized.  If a teacher could only excel in one high quality for training girls, probably the best in which she could excel would be a great sincerity, which would train them in frankness, and in the knowledge that to be entirely frank means to lay down a great price for that costly attainment, a perfectly honourable and fearless life. [1—­“A woman, if it be once known that she is deficient in truth, has no resource.  Have, by a misuse of language, injured or lost her only means of persuasion, nothing can preserve her from falling into contempt of nonentity.  When she is no longer to be believed no on will take the trouble to listen to her...no one can depend on her, no on rests any hope on her, the words of which she makes use have no meaning.”  —­Madame Necker de Saussure, “Progressive Education.”]

It sometimes happens that the realization of this truth comes comparatively late in life to those who ought to have recognized it years before.  Thinking along the surface of things, and in particular repeating catchwords and platitudes and trite maxims on the subject of sincerity, is apt to make us believe that we possess the quality we talk about, and as it is impossible to have anything to do with the education of children without treating of sincerity and truthfulness, it is comparatively easy to slip into the happy assumption that one is truthful, because one would not deliberately be otherwise.  But it takes far more than this to acquire real sincerity of life in the complexity and artificiality of the conditions in which we live.

“And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves.