The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1875-06-18
Advice to School-Ma

In anaddress TO schoolmistressss at Gin
innati the Rev. Mr.. Mayo said eff you
ould awaken the love of beauty in your
children, you must in some way be beau
tiful yourself. And every true woman
knows she has it in her to be supremely
lovely to somebody. Children go deeper
than the outer face or form, and feel by a
subtle magnetism the childlike love, trust,
and confidence in the soul of their teacher.
Thus your school keeping may become
the loftiest university to you, for there
YOU are compelled to take yourself in
hand and put yourself in communion
with the heart and mind of childhood as
the prime condition of success. 1t is
true there are people who by nature are
TO children. "Oh, what a lovely school
ma 'am we've got 20 shouted little girl
to me at noon of the first day of the new
term. Pretty soon along came the new
angel, seemingly very plain young
woman in curls, till merry glance
launched from her eye, like a shaft of
sunshine from loophole in n bastion of
gray clouds, transtixed her little admirer
perched on the garden wall, and made
one grave man sigh for old days of school
life again. The plain young school
ma'am in curls had heart full os
precious things for little Nell and all the
other little folks over i'll the red school
house, and they knew it by instinct.
How often the children will leave the
parlor, with its grand furnishings and
polite company, for the kitchen, to hang
about the cook, the man-of-all work, or
some old codger of Sam Lawson who
draws the children of the village after
him like the train of comet They rec
ognize the childlike spirit under Bridg-
cts rough, red arms and Sans dilapita-
ted hat, and follow it as the most beauti-
ful thing they know. You may not be
gifted with this attractive power,
which lays hold on children in this
irresistible way, but something of it is
given to the dullest soul that is born
into the flesh, and it is one of the deep
mysteries of our spiritual life that we all,
by toll and conservation, and watching
the ways of Providence, so get into ac-
cord with nature and the Holy Spirit
that we may become reconstructed into
the image of whatsoever high and holy
thing we most admire. And in proper
ton as you are what every young woman
who deals with children should be, you
cannot help becoming lovely to them.
Gods way of educating us into refine
me2t of soul and life is to compel us to
look upon and live with one who is to be
daily revelation of grace and nobility.
So in these deep places of the spirit. and
in the daily life i'll the school-room, you
are awaking a faculty for the appreciation
of beauty, without which, all outward
training and beautiful surroundings leave
the child like q wild beast in flower
garden, or the man and woman like a
pair of savages it the place built by his
money and degraded by her vulgarity.
Once awakened, this love for beauty will
permeate every trait of character and
adorn every act of life, as the soft damp
ness of the old English air dresses up
the toughest hedge into fiuttering bank
of blossoms, carpets the stone walls all
over the Westmoreland hills with the
tenderest ferns, and wells the ugliest of
the crookedest old stick dropped by the
way-side with garment of the most del
icate green. This is an cart culture"
that is practicable for every child /; the
art of loving beauty and beautiful peo
pie and objects in nature and life. If
this feeling of beauty can be orce
aroused in the souls of this generation
of school boys and girls aroused by the
love and loneliness of the young people
set to teach and train them m the COM
mon school, we shall have the possibility
of all desired growth not only in the
artistic work of the hand, but in the
higher realm of refined manners and
society always nearing the golden rule"