them to effort; to lead them to see
that Peary conquering the Pole, or Wilbur Wright perfecting the
aeroplane, or Morse struggling through long years of hopelessness and
discouragement to give the world the electric telegraph,--to show them
that these men went through experiences differing only in degree and not
in kind from those which characterize every achievement, no matter how
small, so long as it is dominated by a unitary purpose; to make the
inevitable sloughs of despond no less morasses, perhaps, but to make
their conquest add a permanent increment to growth and development: this
is the task of our drill work as I view it. As the prophecy of Isaiah
has it: "Precept must be upon precept; precept upon precept; line upon
line; line upon line; here a little and there a little." And if we can
succeed in giving our pupils this vision,--if we can reveal the deeper
meaning of struggle and effort and self-denial and sacrifice shining out
through the little details of the day's work,--we are ourselves
achieving something that is richly worth while; for the highest triumph
of the teacher's art is to get his pupils to see, in the small and
seemingly trivial affairs of everyday life, the operation of fundamental
and eternal principles.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: An address before the Kansas State Teachers' Association,
Topeka, October 20, 1910.]

[Footnote 18: W.F. Book, _Journal of Educational Psychology_, vol. i,
1910, p. 195.]

~XII~

THE IDEAL TEACHER[19]

I wish to discuss with you briefly a very commonplace and oft-repeated
theme,--a theme that has been handled and handled until its
once-glorious raiment is now quite threadbare; a theme so full of
pitfalls and dangers for one who would attempt its discussion that I
have hesitated long before making a choice. I know of no other theme
that lends itself so readily to a superficial treatment--of no theme
upon which one could find so easily at hand all of the proverbs and
platitudes and maxims that one might desire. And so I cannot be expected
to say anything upon this topic that has not been said before in a far
better manner. But, after all, very few of our thoughts--even of those
that we consider to be the most original and worth while--are really new
to the world. Most of our thoughts have been thought before. They are
like dolls that are passed on from age to age to be dressed up and
decorated to suit the taste or the fashion or the fancy of each
succe