teacher, while on this subject, most distinctly against the danger of
making the school-room a scene of literary amusement instead of study.
These means of awakening interest and relieving the tedium of the
uninterrupted and monotonous study of text-books must not encroach on
the regular duties of the school. They must be brought forward with
judgment and moderation, and made subordinate and subservient to these
regular duties. Their design is to give spirit and interest, and a
feeling of practical utility to what the pupils are doing; and if
resorted to with these restrictions and within these limits, they will
produce powerful, but safe results.

Another way to excite interest, and that of the right kind, in school,
is not to _remove_ difficulties, but to teach the pupils how to
_surmount_ them. A text-book so contrived as to make study mere play,
and to dispense with thought and effort, is the worst text-book that can
be made, and the surest to be, in the end, a dull one. The great source
of literary enjoyment, which is the successful exercise of intellectual
power, is, by such a mode of presenting a subject, cut off. Secure,
therefore, severe study. Let the pupil see that you are aiming to secure
it, and that the pleasure which you expect that they will receive is
that of firmly and patiently encountering and overcoming difficulty; of
penetrating, by steady and persevering effort, into regions from which
the idle and the inefficient are debarred, and that it is your province
to lead them forward, not to carry them. They will soon understand this,
and like it.

Never underrate the difficulties which your pupils will have to
encounter, or try to persuade them that what you assign is _easy_. Doing
easy things is generally dull work, and it is especially discouraging
and disheartening for a pupil to spend his strength in doing what is
really difficult for him when his instructor, by calling his work easy,
gives him no credit for what may have been severe and protracted labor.
If a thing is really hard for the pupil, his teacher ought to know it
and admit it. The child then feels that he has some sympathy.

It is astonishing how great an influence may be exerted over a child by
his simply knowing that his efforts are observed and appreciated. You
pass a boy in the street wheeling a heavy load in a barrow; now simply
stop to look at him, with a countenance which says, "That is a heavy
load; I should not think that boy