ctual
attendance, of making the scholars learn. Only make up your mind that
you will find out what that way is. If you think it cannot be done, of
course it will not be done. If you have fairly made up your mind that it
_may_ be done, and that _you_ can do it, it is half done already.

You have no idea how much more pleasant the work will be, when you have
once learned how to do it. One reason why so many teachers desert the
ranks, is the irksomeness produced by want of success. Few things are
more intolerable than being obliged to do a thing while conscious of
doing it in an awkward and bungling manner. On the other hand, almost
any work is a pleasure, which one is conscious of doing well.

XVI.

TEACHING POWER.

Teachers differ greatly in their ability to bring a class forward in
intellectual acquisition and growth. With one teacher pupils are all
life and energy, they take hold of difficulties with courage, their
ideas become clear, their very power of comprehension seems to gather
strength. With another teacher, those same pupils, studying the same
subject, are dull, heavy, easily discouraged, and make almost no
progress. The ability thus to stimulate the intellectual activity of
others, to give it at once momentum and progress, is the true measure of
one's teaching power. It may be well to consider for a moment some of
the conditions necessary to the existence and the exercise of this
power.

In the first place, we can exert no great, commanding influence over
others, whether pupils or not, unless we have in a high degree their
confidence. Pupils must have faith in their teacher. I never knew an
instance yet, where there was great intellectual ferment going on in a
class, that the pupils did not believe the teacher infallible, or very
nearly so. This principle of confidence in leadership is one of the
great moving powers of the world. In teaching, it is specially
important. This feeling may indeed be in excess. It may exist to such
an extent as to extinguish all independence of thought, to induce a
blind, unquestioning receptivity. Such an extreme is of course opposed
to true mental progress. But short of this extreme point, there is
almost no amount of faith that children can have in their teacher, that,
if well founded, is not of the highest advantage. Seeing the firm,
assured tread of father or mother, or of an older brother or sister, is
a great aid to the tottering little one in putting forth its