The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1860-10-18
Am Essay.

Read by Miss Helen F. Thorp before the
Town Teachers Association of Salem
Sept Goth, 1860.
The Teachers is an earnest work
A work fraught with eternity, and will
be as she makes it, heavy with discon>
tent, or happy with faithful labor.
There are many pleasures from which
she must turn as the faithful teacher
must be constantly at her place in the
school room during school hours, but if
her life burden is rested with the Great
Eternal, if she Iealizes that to live is to
do good and that life is the harvest time
of jewels that shall meier grow dim, she
will not falter. but will strive earnestly
and onward for that blessed ultimatum
"a perfect teacher.
She may start for her school room
some bright simmer morning, when the
sunbeams by their beauty, the winds by
their freshness, lure her to idleness, she
may draw long breath, very like 81 Il b,
as she treads her onward path, but the
thought that she IS performing a duty,
and that she may that day in her quiet
school life, perform some act of kindness
whose influence shall be felt far into the
voiceless future, that she may open
some smouldering mine of thought in
some young mind that shall still yield
its treasures when her mortality shall
have slumbered ages amid the dust and
her immortality have dwelt an eternity
In the mansion not made with hands.
which her God shall give her in the
hereafter, will bring the quiet smile to
her lips again, and the ebbing gladness
to her heart.
When she has reached her school
room, its walls look gloomy in contrast
with the bright deep-hued paintings,
which summer has spread out DER the
fields and meadows, and hung high DER
the hilltops, but the little ones come
thronging in with their shy good morn.
ings, and she turns from the picture
without to those within. Soul pictures
which she is painting under her Great
Master, God, and which He will finish
beyond the still flowing tide of time.
Lesson after lesson is recited, half
learned lessons perhaps, because little
heads throb with much thinking, but
the teacher must be patient, even though
her head throb too; she must answer
kindly each question even though it is
asked just when it ought n 1t to be, and
thus leading them on, day by day,
she teaches Them kindness by her own
kindness, patience by her own patience.
Christ was the first great soul teach
er, and each teacher should have the |
consciousness Of love in her heart, to |
enable her to be teacher.
Leading them to the source of all
knowledge, she should teach them to
seek for that pure morality without
which there can be no perfect mind.
Some have tried to rob the teachers
life of all it's holiness and high useful
ness, have tired to degrade the occu-
patton of Teaching. The teacher is as
far above such persons as the summer
cloud, floating in its soft, blue beauty, is
above the sand bank bleak and barren.
Some call the children of our district
schools ''dirty, ragged, little young
ones" But when the teacher looks at
the lutte ones and thinks that from
those red lips not many years hence
may flow an eloquence that shall cause
hearts to thrill and eyes to brighten,
and that that mind which requires such |
an effort now to instruct in study, may
sometime be capable OF instructing 9th
ers, leading nations on to truth;and gem
ing the literary world with new Jewels,
she must feel in her heart it is blessed |
to be a teacher, it is blessed to plant
and nurture that which others may
cause to bloom.
Toll on my young teacher friends =
Even when the bright sunlight sleeps
beautifully on the hillside, Turing you to
its treeness, or the drifted Wilderness of
winters snow, is ceaselessly inviting
you to its pleasures keep gathering
your sheaves of patience, XIII dness,
young hearts made happy, young minds
made blooming and bind them closely |
with broad bands of childish trust ready |
for that great day when we must all
bring the burden of our lives before |
God.
Each little mind has an eternity to
live, and it must be growing in truth |
and beauty or slowly degenerating.-
Great will be your joy if you have
helped to make one mind purer, but
greater your woe if you have helped it
down to it's degradation. Bat come
not before you tonight to preach, or to
instruct, as that would be presumption,
but could do either in words that |
would cause your hearts to thrill with
love for the great soul teacher, Christ,
be assured l should not falter, for "tho'
[ walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, will fear no evil, for thou art
with me 4; thy rod and thy staff comfort