if you do not open your heart; the
hearts of others will be forever closed to you. You must give your
time, your care, your affection, yourself. For whatever you may do,
your money certainly is not yourself. Tokens of interest and of
kindness go farther and are of more use than any gifts whatever. How
many unhappy persons, how many sufferers, need consolation far more
than alms! How many who are oppressed are aided rather by protection
than by money!

Reconcile those who are at variance; prevent lawsuits; persuade
children to filial duty and parents to gentleness. Encourage happy
marriages; hinder disturbances; use freely the interest of your pupil's
family on behalf of the weak who are denied justice and oppressed by
the powerful. Boldly declare yourself the champion of the unfortunate.
Be just, humane, beneficent. Be not content with giving alms; be
charitable. Kindness relieves more distress than money can reach.
Love others, and they will love you; serve them, and they will serve
you; be their brother, and they will be your children.

Blame others no longer for the mischief you yourself are doing.
Children are less corrupted by the harm they see than by that you teach
them.

Always preaching, always moralizing, always acting the pedant, you give
them twenty worthless ideas when you think you are giving them one good
one. Full of what is passing in your own mind, you do not see the
effect you are producing upon theirs.

In the prolonged torrent of words with which you incessantly weary
them, do you think there are none they may misunderstand? Do you
imagine that they will not comment in their own way upon your wordy
explanations, and find in them a system adapted to their own capacity,
which, if need be, they can use against you?

Listen to a little fellow who has just been under instruction. Let him
prattle, question, blunder, just as he pleases, and you will be
surprised at the turn your reasonings have taken in his mind. He
confounds one thing with another; he reverses everything; he tires you,
sometimes worries you, by unexpected objections. He forces you to hold
your peace, or to make him hold his. And what must he think of this
silence, in one so fond of talking? If ever he wins this advantage and
knows the fact, farewell to his education. He will no longer try to
learn, but to refute what you say.

Be plain, discreet, reticent, you who are zealous teachers. Be in no
haste to act, exc