inciple of duty, not a _rule_ of the Mount
Vernon School. If I should attempt to make rules which would specify and
prohibit every possible way by which you might do wrong, my laws would
be innumerable, and even then I should fail of securing my object,
unless you had the disposition to do your duty. No legislation can enact
laws as fast as a perverted ingenuity can find means to evade them.

You will perhaps ask what will be the consequence if we transgress
either the single rule of the school or any of the great principles of
duty. In other words, What are the punishments which are resorted to in
the Mount Vernon School? The answer is, there are no punishments. I do
not say that I should not, in case all other means should fail, resort
to the most decisive measures to secure obedience and subordination.
Most certainly I should do so, as it would plainly be my duty to do it.
If you should at any time be so unhappy as to violate your obligations
to yourself, to your companions, or to me--should you misimprove your
time, or exhibit an unkind or a selfish spirit, or be disrespectful or
insubordinate to your teachers, I should go frankly and openly, but
kindly to you, and endeavor to convince you of your fault. I should very
probably do this by addressing a note to you, as I suppose this would be
less unpleasant to you than a conversation. In such a case, I shall hope
that you will as frankly and openly reply, telling me whether you admit
your fault and are determined to amend, or else informing me of the
contrary. I shall wish you to be _sincere_, and then I shall know what
course to take next. But as to the consequences which may result to you
if you should persist in what is wrong, it is not necessary that you
should know them beforehand. They who wander from duty always plunge
themselves into troubles which they do not anticipate; and if you do
what, at the time you are doing it, you know to be wrong, it will not be
unjust that you should suffer the consequences, even if they were not
beforehand understood and expected. This will be the case with you all
through life, and it will be the case here.

I say it _will_ be the case here; I ought rather to say that it will be
the case should you be so unhappy as to do wrong and to persist in it.
Such persistance, however, never occurs--at least it occurs so seldom,
and at intervals so great, that every thing of the nature of punishment,
that is, the depriving a pupil of any e