Dick thoroughly understood me when I told him that on the morrow he might feel at liberty to break down my authority, but that he must remember that I paid cash in full, and that he would need expect no extension of time should he become indebted to me. He understood that punishment would be certain and 'swift and commensurate with the offense.

any

Thomas Hood's lines in "I Remember," which run, "I remember how the sun came peeping in at morn, and how he never came a wink too soon," exactly described my frame of mind in those days. Nine o'clock never came too soon, especially if I had "unfinished business." As stated in the first part of this chapter, I tried to close school with good feeling between teacher and pupils, but to have closed school feeling that some pupil had gained an advantage over me, would have, and sometimes did, mean a restless night. My plan was to balance up every day.

This second day had not closed with as great a pleasure as some teachers might desire, but to me it was a joy. For two days I had been suffering from an awful weight. I had been given a Sunday School class of young men; some of them were now my pupils. They, without cause, except that I was to be the teacher, had offered me an insult that is never offered to any class of people but teachers. The very atmosphere of the school was depressing. The

people were good, but their respect for teachers negative. To have brought matters to an issue, to have had a part in the game, was indeed a satisfaction.

As I went to my boarding place that evening, I went with a consciousness that I had been making rapid developments under the responsibilities that had come to me by virtue of the position to which I had been elected through the influence of my friends and the machinations of a 'county superintendent.

A resolution was formed that evening, and it has been my policy ever since, and I have given it to hundreds of teachers who have used it with successthat I would begin to-morrow just where I left off. to-day and pursue the same policy with diligence. At the close of the first week my policy was accepted by every boy in the school. There was not the slightest evidence of rebellion among the boys and they were settling down to reasonably good work, and I was getting into their games on a give and take basis. I had no feeling of restraint, nor did I have a desire to censure the pupils while at play. When school was called I felt, and this feeling was in no way assumed, that we were opened up for business, and play was to be temporarily suspended. It was a great temptation at times for me not to call for a few minutes after time in case the game was very exciting, but I never yielded to that temptation.

In books there is danger of giving wrong impressions. In the foregoing recital of my second day in school some may get the idea that I was harsh and cruel.

Once I was jokingly advising three young women who were about to receive their degrees and enter the teaching profession, that they must not forget to punish and punish freely. One asked me if I would advise whipping. I said, "Under the right circumstances, I certainly advise it." "Why," she said, "We went to school to you twelve years and we never knew you to whip a pupil."

"Well," I replied, "I guess you are right about that, but if the proper occasion had arisen there would have been corporal punishment administered without consideration of consequences, and it would have been administered at once. I was only joking about your punishing pupils. I want you to be kind to them, especially the little children, but I must ask you to be at all times absolutely in control of the situation."

Some years ago a lady told me of the hard time she was having with the discipline of her room. After telling me of the very bad boys and girls, she said, “I never allow myself to smile. I put on a scowl in the morning and keep it on till the children have passed out at four o'clock." Can one picture a more desolate place than such a schoolroom?

Would not a child be better off out of school than surrounded by such an influence? The teacher who dares not smile, aye, laugh aloud at times during the day, is certain to have an unfortunate schoolroom condition, and the children under her rule are objects of my sympathy. Quick, decisive action is effective. Careless, easy-going, threatening and never-doing teachers will make an orderly school an unfit place for children.

A teacher who cannot discipline and retain the admiration and love of his pupils is a failure. If a teacher be worthy he should be imitated, but he must have likable qualities,-those which appeal to the young and attract them,-or his influence for their good will be negligible. On the other hand, if he be unworthy but possessed of some admirable qualities, he will be imitated. There are many capable teachers, and in some respects, lovable and estimable, whose characters wholly disqualify them as models for the youth. The fact that a teacher is loved and admired is far from proof that he is all right. As certainly as the weight unsupported falls to ground, the child becomes like what he loves and admires.

CHAPTER VI

MANAGING GIRLS

THERE was one feature of my school work that was far from satisfactory, and worse yet, I did not see how it could be improved. I had ten or twelve grown young women in school, and about as many between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. I knew boys, and I knew how to control them and have them for my friends. I have always believed that good square treatment is the only kind that appeals to the normal boy; that he will go just as far as you allow, but that he soon learns his limitations.

At the present time I feel that I know something about girls, but at the end of my first week of teaching I would have jumped at the opportunity of trading off all the girls for an equal number of boys without asking any questions. They appealed to me as not being satisfied with fair treatment. They wanted special privileges and seemed to think that they were entitled, by virtue of their sex, to these special privileges. It was my theory that if a certain act was wrong in a boy it was equally wrong in a girl, that if a girl did wrong she should be just as amenable to discipline as a boy; but on all of these points we seemed to differ. If one girl recited and