22. Train the eye to perceive correctly, the ear to understand correctly, the hand to execute Final correctly, the tongue to speak correctly, and maxims. the mind to retain correctly. "Begin at the beginning." "Follow a natural order." Classify knowledge." "Master principles."

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A WORD IN CONCLUSION

TO COMMISSIONERS AND SUPERINTENDENTS

Upon you rest, to a great extent, the success of the schools and the advancement of the educational interests of this country.

It is by the recommending and licensing of competent and efficient teachers that you are the most successful in promoting the interests of your charge. Let the teachers recommended by you be selected more with reference to social culture, to exalted moral character, to the development of true manhood and womanhood, than to either scholarship or talent. This you can do by selecting and recommending only such persons as shall illustrate in their lives the moral lessons which should be set as an example in schools.

You stand pledged to further the interests, not only of literature and science, but of the highest type of morality.

If you would redeem this pledge you will not license as a teacher any one who violates the laws of moral purity, who gives to social dissipation the hours that belong to sleep, or who indulges in any practice of vice. A sacred trust is committed to you, which, if faithfully and wisely discharged, will make your own day beautiful, and scatter blessings along the pathway of coming years.

To TEACHERS

Help the weaker.

An experience of thirty years in the field of education. has secured principles and conclusions which may be considered not theories, but facts. One fundamental fact thus gained is, that the school should be an appendage of the family, fitted to train the ignorant and weak by self-sacrificing labor and love, and to bestow the most attention on the weakest, the most undeveloped, and the most sinful.

It is exactly the opposite course to which teachers are most tempted. The bright, the good, the industrious, are those whom it is most agreeable to teach, who win most affection, and who promote the reputation of a teacher, and of a school or a college.

To follow this principle, then, demands more clear views of duty and more self-denying benevolence than ordinarily abound.

Another is, that both quickness of perception and retentiveness of memory depend very greatly Importance on the degree of interest excited. Hence of interest. the importance of educating young persons with some practical aim, by which, in case of poverty, they may support themselves.

Another is, that there is no other knowledge so thorough and permanent as that gained in teaching others.

Knowledge by teaching.

Repeatedly has it been observed that a lesson or a problem supposed to be comprehended was imperfectly understood, and became clear only in attempts to aid others in understanding it. In no other profession is the sacred promise, "Give and it shall be given unto you," so fully realized as in that of a teacher.

Few subjects at a time.

Another is that in acquiring knowledge but few branches should be taken at one time, and these should be associated in their character, so that each is an assistance in understanding and remembering the others.

There is a great loss of time and labor in the common method of pursuing four or five disconnected branches of study.

The mind is distracted by variety, and feels a feeble and divided interest.

In many instances, the method of cramming the mind with uninteresting and disconnected details serves to debilitate rather than promote mental power. The memory is the faculty chiefly cultivated, and this at the expense of the others.

In government be gentle yet firm; not anxious to govern in those things that are innocent and harmless, but to restrain practices that are unquestionably immoral by the exercise of all the authority with which you are invested.

In order that you may worthily discharge the duties. which thus confront you at the threshold of your field of labor, it is of the first importance that your own habits of thought and life be wholly correct.

No one is fit to govern others until he has learned to govern himself. Self-government and self-restraint are impossible without intelligence and virtue.

The task of the teacher is one of great responsibility and labor.

It is easier for a general to command an army than for a teacher to govern a school; for a general has to

deal with and consider only immediate results, besides being invested with absolute power, while the teacher has to consider chiefly results to be attained in the future, and he is forbidden by the consideration of his own and the pupil's welfare to exercise other than qualified power.

Then the military commander trains his soldiers to wield weapons only against material fortifications, while the teacher is to discipline those under his control in the skilful use of the mental and moral powers, and prepare them to contend successfully against superstition begotten of ignorance, against habits of thought and action that reach their root far back in the centuries, and against spiritual wickedness in high places". Hence great statesmen and victorious generals are of little value in any country without efficient teachers.

To our public schools we must look for those who will be called upon to manage the affairs of families, to transact the business of town and of State, to fill the vacated bench of justice, to sit in the halls of legislation, and to direct and control the church of God.

Upon the character of our schools and teachers, therefore, depends the weal or woe of unborn millions, the prosperity or downfall of our boasted institutions.

As the concluding thought, teachers and friends, may we all bear in mind that our life in this world is but the preparatory department in the School of God.

Let us be so attentive to the lessons given us by the Great Teacher, that when the day of examination with us severally shall come, we may hear the glad welcome "Well done", and at last gather beyond the River, under