St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1878-09-20

those minds, we can readily understand.
The very attitude means confidence,
dOcility, the receptive and Obedient
temper. Some curious things come to
pass between an admired teacher and
his pupils. They seem to hang on his
lips as though every word were too
precious to be lost. Common things
said by him sound to them like oracles.
He makes a joke, poor enough if it
came from any one else, but from him
it is the essence of pure wit, and they
all laugh not with cOunterfeited glee,
as did the urchins beneath the rod of
GOldsmith's schoolmaster, but with un-
feigned delight. He makes an assertion
which would be received from any one
else with iDcredulity or opposition, but
ipse dirt and that is enough to secure
its ready acceptance. He makes a
blunder, a plain palpable blunder which
if any other teacher committed you
would see derisive smiles passing round
the class, but because he makes it, it
goes undetected. There is no homage
so f1attering as this; no power so sweet
to the possessor of it. The pedagogue's
chair, after all, is the real throne it
rules not by force over reluctant sub
.jects; it sways young minds and hearts
capable of generous enthusiasm. This
may serve to explain why the real
teachers, the Samuel Taylors, the Tay
lor Lewises, keep on teaching to the
end and die in the harness. The ad
miratiOn of pupils, the frank and affec
tionate homage of the class room, has
become essential to their existence.
The aroma of life were gone with that.
If it be now asked, how does the teacher
manage to inspire this admiration, the
answer is that it is not by management
at all. The cOquette may so manage
as to beget the kind of admiration she
cOvets, but no arts or devices can win
the admiration of pupil for teacher. 1t
comes largely from the admiration the
teacher has for his pupils. There must
be in the good sense of the phrase a
mutual admiration. That man or wO
man has in him or her no capacity for
teaching who does not admire, with alb
sorbing and boundless admiration, the
wonderful being with whom they have
to do. We get enthusiastic by study
of inanimate and irrational objects
rocks, plants, animals, stars-w why should
we not in the study of what is thou
sand times more interesting and won
derful than any of them, a human mind
in the spring time of its eternal year, a
being that enfolds within itself infinite
capabilities waiting for the warm breath
of inspiration from another living soul
to expand it into fairest bloom. /
once heard gifted woman, who was a
mother and teacher, say of those who
were agitating for larger rights for
women, "They need not pity us; our
work is a great deal more interesting
than mans work we watch and super
intend the unfolding of life, and there
is nothing in the world so curious and
full of interest as that !; we busy our
selves about mind and heart, affections
and habits, i'll young plastic natures !;
that is vastly more interesting work
than buying and selling, ploughing and
hammering, caucusing and voting" But
the true teacher finds material for ad
miration not only in the common hu-
man nature which is in every pupil,
but in the individual traits of each. He
not merely loves young persons in the
abstract, as great many do or claim
to do, he admires each one for what he
is, or at least for what he can be. When
| hear primary teacher say that she
has got the most wonderful children
that teacher ever had, while a stranger
looking at them can see in them nothing
wonderful at all, but only Il lot of little
tOw-headed urchins just like any other
lot, |, as a school commissioner, can see
something to admire in my teacher.
But when hear teacher always COM
planning of poor material to work upon,
speakin harshly of his pupils, holding
up their mistakes to ridicule and pity
ing himself that he has to be their
teacher, | begin to think that that man
ought to be in some other business. A
| large capacity for admiration is prime
requisite in teacher: the critical fac
ulty is in danger of being disprOpOr-
tiOnately developed. know teacher
who says he does not dare read the New
York Nation, journal which never has
discovered anything in the sun but its
spots. He says that he finds the need
of stimulating his faculty of apprecia-
ton, his power of discerning beauty in
men and things, and that he breads to
have his admiration ridiculed, his en-
thusiasm dampened, his faith chilled
by the perpetual carping and sneering
of the Nation. The teacher must not
be pessimist. He must have the
charity that believeth all good things,
hopeth all things. He must believe
that every pupil has in him the capaci-
ties of glorious being but little lower
than the angels, and this prospective
greatness and excellence should awaken
his admiration and stimulate his inter-
est. 1t is said of an old German teacher
that he met his pupils every morning
with a profound bow, feeling himself to
be in the presence of the future generals,
magistrates, and ministers, of the ma
ton. 1t is more than pleasantly and
more than flattery that suggests to
many teacher in small districts that
she sees on the bench before her, future
senators, judges and governors. She
looks upon her pupils with an admiring
love which prophecies greatness Of
which she sees the germ. And she shall
not be disappointed. If she and others
who follow her are faithful to their high
trusts, these little ones shall be presi-
dents, governors, judges, senators, OF
something still better, good and true
men and women, faithful and useful
wherever God puts them, and heirs OF
Immortality.
Another trait which / reckon high
among the prime qualifications of a
teacher, is fine sense of justice. The
notion OF natural antagOnism between
teacher and pupil seems to get into the
pupils mind with the greatest ease and
is expelled only with the greatest diff
ticulty. When you have got the idea
admitted that the teacher of right ought
to be, and in fact is, the scholars friend
not his taskmaster and enemy, then il
takes still longer to get the fact recog-
nized, if it is fact, that the teacher is
equally the friend of all scholars. II