ed or a virtuous man. You do engage to give
them all faithful instruction, and to bestow upon each such a degree of
attention, as is consistent with the claims of the rest. But it is both
unwise and unjust, to neglect the many trees in your nursery, which by
ordinary attention, may be made to grow straight and tall, and to bear
good fruit, that you may waste your labor upon a crooked stick, from
which all your toil can secure very little beauty or fruitfulness.

Let no one now understand me to say, that such cases are to be
neglected. I admit the propriety, and in fact, have urged the duty, of
paying to them a little more than their due share of attention. What I
now condemn is the practice, of which all teachers are in danger, of
devoting such a disproportionate and unreasonable degree of attention to
them, as to encroach upon their duties to others. The school, the whole
school, is your field, the elevation _of the mass_, in knowledge and
virtue, and no individual instance, either of dulness or precocity,
should draw you away from its steady pursuit.

(6.) The teacher should guard against unnecessarily imbibing those
faulty mental habits, to which his station and employment expose him.
Accustomed to command, and to hold intercourse with minds which are
immature and feeble, compared with our own, we gradually acquire habits,
that the rough collisions and the friction of active life, prevent from
gathering around other men. Narrowminded prejudices and prepossessions
are imbibed, through the facility, with which, in our own little
community, we adopt and maintain opinions. A too strong confidence in
our own views on every subject, almost inevitably comes, from never
hearing our opinions contradicted or called in question; and we express
those opinions in a tone of authority and even sometimes of arrogance,
which we acquire in the school-room, for there, when we speak, nobody
can reply.

These peculiarities show themselves first, and in fact, most commonly,
in the school-room; and the opinions thus formed, very often relate to
the studies and management of the school. One has a peculiar mode of
teaching spelling, which is successful almost entirely through the
magic influence of his interest in it, and he thinks no other mode of
teaching this branch, is even tolerable. Another must have all his
pupils write on the angular system, or the anti-angular system, and he
enters with all the zeal into a controversy on the subje