egan again, but was soon completely confused by the
teacher's accompaniment. He stopped in the middle of his line, saying,

"I could say it, only you put me out."

"Well, now try to say the Alphabet, and let me see if I can put you out
there."

As might have been expected, the teacher failed. The boy went regularly
onward to the end.

"You see, now," said the teacher to the class who had witnessed the
experiment, "that this boy knows his Alphabet in a different sense from
that in which he knows his Multiplication Table. In the latter, his
knowledge is only imperfectly his own; he can make use of it only under
favorable circumstances. In the former it is entirely his own;
circumstances have no control over him."

A child has a lesson in Latin Grammar to recite. She hesitates and
stammers, miscalls the cases, and then corrects herself, and, if she
gets through at last, she considers herself as having recited well, and
very many teachers would consider it well too. If she hesitates a little
longer than usual in trying to summon to her recollection a particular
word, she says, perhaps, "Don't tell me," and if she happens at last to
guess right, she takes her book with a countenance beaming with
satisfaction.

"Suppose you had the care of an infant school," might the instructor say
to such a scholar, "and were endeavoring to teach a little child to
count, and she should recite her lesson to you in this way, 'One, two,
four--no, three--one, two, three----stop, don't tell me--five--no,
four--four--five--------I shall think in a minute--six--is that right?
five, six,' &c. Should you call that reciting well?"

Nothing is more common than for pupils to say, when they fail of
reciting their lesson, that they could say it at their seats, but that
they can not now say it before the class. When such a thing is said for
the first time it should not be severely reproved, because nine children
in ten honestly think that if the lesson were learned so that it could
be recited any where, their duty is discharged. But it should be kindly,
though distinctly explained to them, that in the business of life they
must have their knowledge so much at command that they can use it at all
times and in all circumstances, or it will do them little good.

One of the most common cases of difficulty in pursuing mathematical
studies, or studies of any kind where the succeeding lessons depend upon
those which precede, is the fact that the pupil, t