line, and putting one word to each boy, goes regularly
down, each successive pupil calculating the chances whether a word,
which he can accidentally spell, will or will not come to him. If he
spells it, the teacher cannot tell whether he is prepared or not. That
word is only one among fifty, constituting the lesson. If he misses it,
the teacher cannot decide that he was unprepared. It might have been a
single accidental error.

Another teacher, hearing the same lesson, requests the boys to bring
their slates, and as he dictates the words, one after another, requires
all to write them. After they are all written, he calls upon the pupils
to spell them aloud as they have written them, simultaneously, pausing a
moment after each, to give those who are wrong, an opportunity to
indicate it, by some mark opposite the word misspelled. They all count
the number of errors and report them. He passes down the class, glancing
his eye at the work of each one, to see that all is right, noticing
particularly those slates, which, from the character of the boys, need a
more careful inspection. A teacher, who had never tried this experiment,
would be surprised at the rapidity with which such work will be done by
a class, after a little practice.

Now how different are these two methods, in their actual results! In the
latter case, the whole class are thoroughly examined. In the former, not
a single member of it, is. Let me not be understood to recommend exactly
this method of teaching spelling, as the best one to be adopted, in all
cases. I only bring it forward as an illustration of the idea, that a
little machinery, a little ingenuity, in contriving ways of acting on
the _whole_, rather than on individuals, will very much promote the
teacher's designs.

In order to facilitate such plans, it is highly desirable that the
classes should be trained to military precision and exactness in these
manipulations. What I mean by this, may perhaps be best illustrated, by
describing a case: it will show, in another branch, how much will be
gained by acting upon numbers at once, instead of upon each individual
in succession.

Imagine, then, that a teacher requested all the pupils of his school,
who could write, to take out their slates, at the hour for a general
exercise. As soon as the first bustle of opening and shutting the desks
was over, he looked around the room, and saw some ruling lines across
their slates, others wiping them all over on