4 And shall it ever be, that for some trifling" errand," — (we have often wished the word were "expunged" from our language,) which, by early rising, might as well be done long before school hours; or for some pretext originating in the imbecility or lack of forethought of our children's natural guardians must it ever be, that the teacher's life shall be a life of perplexity, and the design of our public school system be so far frustrated? What has been said of irregular attendance will apply with equal force to want of punctuality to the hour of opening the school. The reasons for tardiness, if possible, are often more futile than those for entire absence. The effects upon the school are nearly the same; for the current proverb, " better late than never," will hardly hold in this case. But the effects of tardiness are most disastrous upon the child. He is allowed to be his own teacher of a most deleterious lesson. Let it never be forgotten, it is just as easy to be strictly punctual as otherwise; and the parent, who will not lay the foundation of a habit so valuable in a child, when it can be done without cost, deserves not the privilege of being a parent! He betrays his trust; he injures his own child! 8. Parents should be slow in condemning the teacher for supposed faults. This is a point on which many are very apt to act wrong. Too often is it the case, that a teacher is tried, condemned and publicly executed, without even a hearing. Some troublesome, precocious youth, who has, it may be very justly, received some proportionate reward for his dark deeds, determines on revenge. He immediately tells his story to any who will hear it. If his parents are inconsiderate, and encourage him to go on, he is tempted to overreach the truth on the one hand, and to stop short of it on the other, till he succeeds in having the combustible materials around him lighted into a flame. Such a fire is seldom kindled without most severely scathing somebody; and it sometimes happens, that those most burned, are they who apply the match and fan the flame. The truth is, few parents are capable of judging at the first blush upon the merits of a case, which they have not witnessed. They have strong partialities in favor of the complainant; and then they have but very inadequate views of the difficulties, the untold and untellable difficulties, with which the teacher must daily contend. We undertake to say, that parents often expect more of a teacher, than he can possibly accomplish. They expect him to advance their children in learning, without making the proper allowance for the difference of abilities which his pupils possess. Every parent wishes his son to be foremost in improvement, and he expects it, because he wishes it. At the same time he expects the school to be a perfect pattern of good order, because in his family, where, perhaps, he has but one child, he has never known any insurmountable outrage. He forgets, that probably fifty other parents are expecting for their children, as much as he for his, and that the teacher is laboring in laudable ambition to do faithfully, all that can be expected of him, with some three or four scores of individuals, whose tempers and capacities and habits are as different as their coun tenances. In judging of the teacher's government, the parent commonly compares it with his own family discipline, because the family is the only community with which he is acquainted, at all analogous to the school. He forgets, perhaps, his own recent fit of impatience, even among his little circle of some half a dozen; and wonders at the unrestrained and unrestrainable temper of the schoolmaster, who, it is said, was not quite selfpossessed in his school of a hundred. But the analogy does not hold between the family and the school. The parent has authority in the premises, from which, to all intents, there is no appeal; and his children know it. He has several rooms at his command for solitary confinement, or for solitary reproof and reasoning. He has sole command of the "staff of life" in his community, which he can deal out in measured quantities, with water, to be taken alone, or he can withhold it altogether till submission is quietly yielded! Moreover, he has the advantage of knowing perfectly, the disposition of each subject of his authority, and may always proceed advisedly in the adaptation of his discipline. He has ample leisure for the purpose; for, if his business be pressing during the day, he can postpone the whole matter till the calm and silent hour of evening, when, unexcited and undisturbed, he may pursue his steady purpose. With all these advantages it would be strange, if a parent could not govern his own household well, and that, too, without much resort to the rod. The parent may well wonder at himself, if he have not good discipline. But the case is not thus with the teacher. His authority in these latter days, is somewhat questionable. He usually has but one room for his use, and that one often too small even for the pursuit of the more quiet duties of the school. He has no prison, and if he had, he has no authority to confine beyond his usual school hours. He has no "bread and water" to dispense or to withhold. He cannot, unless his discernment is supernatural, have a perfect knowledge of the disposition of each pupil, and hence he is, from the nature of the case, liable to misjudgment in the adaptation of his means. He has no leiHe must work all the time; for his reputation depends upon his success in teaching. He is expected to advance each pupil daily. He has not the time to adjust all his measures by deliberate reflection. He cannot always put off the case. His community probably may need the immediate check his punishment will give, and if he should neglect to work the pump, the ship would probably sink, and bury him and his in the waves of insufferable confusion. sure. Consider well the life of the teacher. He must apply himself constantly, and often to numberless things at the same time. We have been told, I know, that the teacher "should never do but one thing at the same time." But this is impossible. Two things he must always do at once; he must govern and instruct. He never can do the latter without having his mind on the former. It is this double attention which makes his life a weary one. He might govern with comparative ease, if his duty ended there. The instruction would be delightful, if that could be pursued alone. But they must go together. With respect to the one, not a mistake must pass unnoticed. Every error in declension or conjugation, in orthography or calculation, in matter or manner, must be detected and set right; and at the same time, the stolen whispered must be heard, the clandestine plaything must be captured, the incipient plot must be discovered, the arch trick must be anticipated, the idler must be watched, the wayward reproved and set right, and the stubborn and the impudentthe coarse and the turbulent must be subdued. All these things must go together; they cannot be separated. Then, in ordinary schools, unforeseen perplexities will arise. One boy has lost his book; another has left his at home; another makes a clamorous complaint of some injury done him by his next neighbor; a fourth is too warm and opens the window; a fifth is too cold and immediately shuts it, or applies to the teacher for liberty to do so. Add to these the perplexities occasioned by late attendance and frequent absence to which we have before referred, and many other things literally "too numerous to mention," and who can wonder, that the teacher should sometimes be a little in doubt as to the best mode of proceedure in his discipline ? We name not these things to complain of our lot as a teacher. That after all is the profession of our choice. But we name them to show why the parent should be slow in condemning the teacher for supposed faults. It seems to us, if parents would but reflect, they would be exceedingly slow to decide against the instructor without a hearing, “as the manner of some is." 9. When the teacher is known to be wrong, parents should possess a forgiving spirit. It is a duty enjoined by the Great Teacher, that we should love our enemies, and that we should forgive men their trespasses as we hope to be forgiven. But how rarely is there any such thing as forgiveness for the faults of a teacher. “He has done wrong turn him out," is the gratuitous decision of almost all who have any cause of complaint against the schoolmaster. Is he their enemy? then they should forgive. But he is not their enemy. In nine cases of ten, he has erred in the midst of well-meaning; he has erred because he was perplexed beyond the sustaining power of humanity! Surely then he deserves your compassion rather than your rebuke. Show to him the kind spirit, give to him the support he needs, second his reproofs, if need be, his punishments, give no countenance to the offending and offended pupil, no occasion for others to expect your sympathy if they offend and find the way of the transgressor is hard, — and you do that for the teacher, which he has a right, as your fellow-citizen and your fellow-christian, to expect from you, and that for the school which its best interest demands. We add but one thing more. Parents should give to teachers their sympathy. Some parents, ready to meet and defray the requsite expenses of their children's tuition, ready to cooperate with the teacher in all laudable plans and aims for the welfare of his pupils, are still lamentably deficient in this one christian grace and virtue. They seem to have no conception that he has wants like other men, that time with its free use and unfettered enjoyment is also to him a blessed commodity; that confinement within the four walls of a school room, month after month, does not necessarily leave him no tastes to gratify beyond. They seem not to realize, that the teacher has nerves that need relaxation, languid pulses to be revived, and wasting strength to be renewed; and they can, and not unfrequently do, grudge the limited vacations, which are absolutely necessary to recruit his crippled energies and exhausted body. We repeat it, we claim the sympathy, the spontaneous, grateful sympathy of the parents, sympathy for the perplexities, the toils, the nameless trials that overtask the mind, unnerve the frame, and wear down the strength of the studious, faithful, devoted teacher." It must be admitted, that many parents estimate the services of the schoolmaster, in very much the same way, that they estimate the services of the day-laborer in their employ. The man of business pays the clerk in his counting-room, and the cartman on his wharf, and the term-bill of his child's teacher, and in each case feels, in his own mind, alike absolved from all further obligation. OBLIGATION! Obligation from a parent toward a teacher! We have heard the word sneered at, the idea treated with contempt. But as there is no estimating the amount of good or evil influence upon the ductile mind of a child, extending as it does through his boyhood, felt in his riper years, operating unseen upon the principles and habits of all after life, running into eternity even, so there can be no estimating, in mere dollars and cents, the unspeakable value of a good teacher's services; and no pecuniary emolument can ever cancel the obligation, unfelt and unacknowledged though it be, which the parent comes under to the teacher, while he sees the germs of fair promise in his boy, shooting into active usefulness as that boy becomes the man. Yes, the parent witnesses the expansion of the bud, the beautifying of the flower; but the genial influences, which operate upon these as the gentle dew and the blessed sunshine of heaven, are wholly forgotten and overlooked. A hand is at work behind the scenes, and the light of eternity can only reveal to the astonished parent, that the sun, the shade, the imperceptible dew on the mind of his child were to be found in the unobtrusive workings, the judicious, persevering, faithful training of the neglected teacher. There is something cheering and animating in the cordiality of soul, which it is in the parents' power to exercise toward the instructer. If they have not the time for the visitation o the school, or the supposed qualifications for the examination |