s of character, temperament,
mentality, and physical well-being of the children intrusted to her
care.

The average teacher--nearly as elusive as the ideal--is, to a surprising
and ever-increasing extent, learning to do this. It is, in fact, a very
large part of the law and the prophets in modern pedagogy. The teacher
is expected to know, and she generally does know, what, in hospital
parlance, is called the "history" of her pupils, and the newer schools
are equipped with apparatus for making thorough physical examinations
upon which the pupil's curriculum will largely depend.

As rare perhaps as the dodo-bird is the mother who takes an intelligent
and helpful interest in the school life of her offspring. She generally
regards the school as a safe house of detention, a sort of day nursery
of larger growth. Mrs. O'Rourke will send Tim and Pat and Biddy and
Jimmy and Mike and Delia, so that she may have leisure to take care of
the twins and the baby, and to do the washing; while Mrs. Fitz-Jones
will send Robert Albert Walter Fitz-John Fitz-Jones, so that she may
be--to quote Browning, and since he's dead whatever he wrote must be
considered proper--"safe in her corset lacing," ere she sallies out to
bridge. Occasionally the two powers for good and evil in the child's
world meet. A large mother will drag a reluctant boy to school, and
loudly bewail herself for that she can do nothing with him. He has been
dismissed as unteachable by another teacher.

"He ain't, so to speak, bad, miss. He's just naturally ugly an' stoopid.
Look at him now," and she directs the general attention to the writhings
of her victim. "Would you think I just washed and combed him an' came
around--leavin' my housework, too--to ask you to try him? He don't
appreciate nothin' I do for him. Just naturally ugly and stoopid."

It may take a week to undo the effects of this introduction and to gain
the little chap's confidence. Then the teacher wheedles him through the
physical examination and seeks further speech with the mother.

"Your little boy--" she will begin.

"He's been botherin' you, too, most likely. Him and me will have a
settlin' this afternoon----"

"No, not that, please. I hardly know how to tell you. I'm afraid you
have--we all have--been misjudging him. But have you ever had his eyes
examined?"

"What fur?"

"His sight. He is--I hope you will be strong and brave about it--very
nearly blind in his left eye, and the right is affec