Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1899-06-21

world.
This then is the supreme and vital at |
titude toward all intellectual work, il its |
success is to be an honest success And |
this attitude must be, il ever, trained and |
fixed INTO habit in the school lite. To do |
it, there must be the willing pupil, the in
spring teacher and the controlling home. |
The pupil must early learn two things
LIST, to get lessons End, not to get lessons
He must get lessons as he must do his
every-dsy's duty promptly, punctually in
that day-this OF itself no mean attainment.
But he must do this as means to greater
end. He must learn not to get lessons,
not to be mere performer of task work.
There is nothing so deadening as that. 1t
is the very narcotic of the mind Indeed
those who limit their ambition Just to this,
never do, in fact, get their lessons we'll
They never lay hold Of principles. They
have no glow, no onward stride. There
can be no intellectual athlete among such.
They plod dreary round.
have seen,-what teacher has not p
pupils by the score who had been mis-
trained into this very thing. Just to GO t les
sons and,- by them, seen them, l say,
possessed of carefully trained actors
memory, that supreme development of
''ths faculty which forgets." The actor
knows well his g lines" OF the hour and the
week. and knows them for the hour and
the week, and makes haste to forget them
tor the sake of his "lines" of the next
week. This is right for him for it is his
business. But l have seen pupils recite
glibly from end to end the lesson, and
three days later not able to recall the first
principle it contained. One lesson drives
out another as ''one nail drives out
another" But we can hardly call this
The expulsive power of new affection"
This is what comes of learning lessons.
This is putting in time.
Is this the teachers fault? answer in
parenthesis, yes, often, but not always.
of course no teacher can impart momen-
tum to class who is himself mere getter
of lessons, or whose books in the classics,
for example, are black with the smudges OF
"cribs" from the Latin reader to Homer.
z No teacher can impart momentum to
a class who cannot teach well some things
without book and more things in spite OF
book ''Sueh, it has been well said, (and
we find it SOY, '' Such is the waste in the
work of teaching, that to teach we'll the
half we must know we'll pretty nearly the
whole" The teacher must know the trend
and the end to direct we'll at the beginning
n And no teacher can wake up class who
never feels that fervor which cannot be
described, that rapt glow in the presence
of the truth he is to teach which leads hin
in the silent hours, when apart with book
and lamp, to cry with one Of old, " hello
my speech and drew in my breath Tor il
was Thy Law"
And no teacher can impart momentum tt
a class who has no convictions on anything
who,-" hungry Greekling" that he is
loves to GO run with the deer and hunt will
} the hounds" in all things, and is entirel.
willing to teach that So the earth is square
or round as the parents please" or as tn
local Joe Walker prescribes.
Trace we now the progress,-for it i
: progress,-of those students who in tn
. spirit Of fidelity and great cheerfulnes
determine to regard time as opportunit,.
rather than measurement, and to view theI
work in the light of attainment and not il
= the light of the clock-face. 1t is not Ion.
before they feel the fervor. Doing thei
work they like their work and soon the
know the joy of having attained. The
know now that they can do, and they g
! on to do. The power of attention
. quickened. They learn the art Of gettin
at once to work. At once they shut GU
; all sources of interruption, all irrelevan
|. thought. For them, for the time being
there exists only two things in the universe
! the mind of the learner and the trut
d before it. Speedily too they acquire tn
art of selection, skill in getting at tn
e essentials, at the heart, of lesson, ski
9 in stripping away trivial and obscur
} details.
If By mastery mastery comes Theirs is a
e accelerated movement, the first chapter
/ of Caesar we'll learned at the beginning {
If the year,-books of Caesar, chapters a
:. a sitting, read at sight at the end of tn
N year. Is not here the real economy {
RS time? Those who in the begmnin
lie gcudged no time and poured out effort lik
Mt water for honest mastery's sake have no
he time abundantly, while those who in th
" beginning grudged the hours and counte
in the minutes are grudging and countin
y them still. These young Fideles, thes
ntI workers for mastery, are already well G
the road toward the scholarly, the intelle'
he tual life.
ID say nothing now even of college an
at the great professions. My thought
g, wider than that have not yet told Il
re great thing, tell it now. Through TIL
IL fervor and intimacy with learning they a
ir already moving, as Ruskin said a gre
s. while ago, "ip the midst of fair and m
ne jestic company"
in If they may not sit in the ''seats of Il
ri mighty" they shall at least knew Il
IL mighty. When the kings of the age
a Homer and Plato and Horace and Soph
IS cles and Shakespeare gather and go by t
at gether-and the masters Of modern scien
ry along with them-these shall at least tou'
" the hem OF their garments and catch Il
IN radiance aud serenity which stream fro
ne the faces of the mighty.
RS Like Cicero of old they shall have tn
ne which shall nourish their youth, adorn the
be Joy, solace their grief and comfort the
m age. They shall be refreshed in the hou
I'd which fall upon us all at whiles-hours
in which life seems smitten with pettiness al
we, ourselves, as "hapless sea-weed caug
er In the welter and wash between the ell
be and the flow Of the tide" when the day
a gray and the wind in the northeast. II
kingdom OF learning shall be within ther
be the kingdom of learning, | say, which is
of part of the kingdom of God.
be Filled with lofty ideals, they, to the
a souls health and to the health of the neig
at lborbood will look for the best things al