ng upon a little empire of mind, and that he is not to
endeavor to drive them as a man drives a herd, by mere peremptory
command or half angry blows. He must study the nature of the effect he
is to produce, and of the materials upon which he is to work, and adopt,
after mature deliberation, a plan to accomplish his purpose, founded
upon the principles which ought always to regulate the action of mind
upon mind, and adapted to produce the _intellectual effect_, which he
wishes to accomplish.

In the case supposed, the teacher concluded to appeal to emulation.
While I describe the measure he adopted, let it be remembered that I am
now only approving of the resort to ingenuity and invention, and the
employment of moral and intellectual means, for the accomplishment of
his purposes, and not of the measures themselves. I do not think the
plan I am going to describe a wise one; but I do think that the teacher,
while trying it, must _have been interested in his intellectual
experiment_. His business, while pursued in such a way, could not have
been a mere dull and uninteresting routine.

He purchased, for three cents apiece, two long lead-pencils, an article
of great value, in the opinion of the boys of country schools; and he
offered them, as prizes, to the boy who would write most carefully; not
to the one who should write _best_, but to the one whose book should
exhibit most appearance of _effort_ and _care_ for a week. After
announcing his plan, he watched, with strong interest its operation. He
walked round the room while the writing was in progress, to observe the
effect of his measure. He did not reprove those who were writing
carelessly; he simply noticed who and how many they were. He did not
commend those who were evidently making effort; he noticed who and how
many they were, that he might understand how far, and upon what sort of
minds, his experiment was successful, and where it failed. He was taking
a lesson in human nature,--human nature as it exhibits itself in boys,
and was preparing to operate more and more powerfully by future plans.

The lesson which he learned by the experiment was this, that one or two
prizes will not influence the majority of a large school. A few seemed
to think that the pencils were possibly within their reach, and _they_
made vigorous efforts to secure them; but the rest wrote on as before.
Thinking it certain that they should be surpassed by the others, they
gave up the contest, at