presently.

"I do not know what the condition of your desks is. I have not examined
them, and have not, in fact, seen the inside of more than one or two. As
I have not brought up this subject before, I presume that there are a
great many which can be arranged better than they are. Will you all now
look into your desks, and see whether you consider them in good order?
Stop a moment, however. Let me tell you what good order is. All those
things which are alike should be arranged together. Books should be in
one place, papers in another, and thus every thing should be classified.
Again, every thing should be so placed that it can be taken out without
disturbing other things. There is another principle, also, which I will
mention: the various articles should have _constant_ places, that is,
they should not be changed from day to day. By this means you soon
remember where every thing belongs, and you can put away your things
much more easily every night than if you had every night to arrange them
in a new way. Now will you look into your desks, and tell me whether
they are, on these three principles, well arranged?"

The boys of most schools, where this subject had not been regularly
attended to, would nearly all answer in the negative.

"I will allow you, then, some time to-day, fifteen minutes to arrange
your desks, and I hope you will try to keep them in good order
hereafter. A few days hence I shall examine them. If any of you wish for
assistance or advice from me in putting them in order, I shall be happy
to render it."

By such a plan, which will occupy but little more time than the
irritating and useless scolding which I supposed in the other case, how
much more will be accomplished. Such an address would of itself,
probably, be the means of putting in order, and keeping in order, at
least one half of the desks in the room, and following up the plan in
the same manner and in the same spirit with which it was begun would
secure the rest.

I repeat it, therefore, make it a principle in all cases to aim as much
as possible at the correction of those faults which are likely to be
general by _general measures_. You avoid by this means a vast amount of
irritation and impatience, both on your own part and on the part of your
scholars, and you produce twenty times the useful effect.

3. The next principle which occurs to me as deserving the teacher's
attention in the outset of his course is this:

Interest your schol