osition, be better able
to teach and train it, will not be so likely to attain his object as he
would if he were to spend a portion of his time in mingling with other
children and in becoming acquainted with childhood generally. A teacher
who should shut himself up in his own school-room, giving to it every
moment of his waking hours, would not be likely to benefit so largely
his own pupils, as if he were to spend a portion of his time in
communing with other teachers and observing other methods besides his
own. A teacher even who should mingle freely with those of his own
profession, and get all the benefit to be derived from observation of
the views and methods of other teachers, but should stop there, would
not yet obtain that broad, comprehensive view, even of his own calling,
and of the duties of his own particular school-room that he might have
if he would travel occasionally beyond the walk of books and pedagogy,
and become acquainted with the views and methods of men in other spheres
of life, with merchants, lawyers, and doctors, with farmers, mechanics,
and artisans.

It is only by mingling with those outside of our own little specialty
that we are disenthralled from the bonds of prejudice. It is wonderful
to see the change produced in the minds of men of different religious
denominations, when by any means they are thrown much into the actual
fellowship of working together in some cause of common benevolence. How,
without any argument, merely by the fact of their being brought out to a
different point of view, the relative magnitude and importance of
certain truths change in their estimation! The points in which
Christians differ become so much smaller; the points in which they agree
become so much larger. The little stone at the mouth of the cave no
longer hides the mountain in the distance.

Let the teacher, the merchant, the mechanic, the banker, the lawyer, the
minister of religion even, still remember that he is a man, and that he
can never reach a full and just estimate of his own position without
sometimes going outside of it and placing himself in the position of
other men.

XIV.

MEN OF ONE IDEA.

There is between the teacher and other operatives one obvious
difference, arising from the difference in the materials upon which
their labor is bestowed. That class of laborers whose toil and skill are
exerted in modifying the forms of matter, succeed generally in
proportion to the narrowness