We have now attempted to show something of what kindness us, something of its nature, of its adaptedness to govern, and the medium through which it works. We have attempted to prove that it must be genuine kindness and of universal application, in order to prove efficient in the government of a school. It only remains for us to prove that it is the highest rule of order, and this we have proved in part already; for, discarding extreme looseness in school discipline as unworthy of the name of order, we have only to compare rigid discipline with something midway between it and extreme looseness. In taking kindness as a rule of order, we adopt all that is good in the old way. We adopt all of its best rules, and enforce these rules more easily by an appeal direct to the higher nature, than could possibly be done by any forced appeal to the lower passions. In appealing, through the medium of kindness in ourselves, to the same emotion in our scholars, we are sure that we shall have no blighting influence upon their minds, that we shall inflict no wounds upon the heart to fester and bleed in after years, but, rather, that we may pour the healing balm into those wounds already inflicted by unkindness. Kindness at once exalts the teacher's calling. He feels a deeper interest in his work. The labor which he undertakes from an unselfish motive, is no longer drudgery to him. All of his ambition is centered upon this one idea, how he shall most profit his scholars, how he shall do them most good. What other rule of order can any suggest that combines so much that is right and good and makes its appeal to no low passion? What other rule can be so universal in its application? We know of none; we know of no higher medium to which we can appeal. Then, as good order is the foundation of every good thing, let us build upon it our school structure, having genuine kindness' the chief corner-stone, and universal kindness the key-stone, uniting in the foundation all the attending virtues. Thus alone. can the teacher raise himself to his true dignity, and thus may our schools be raised to their proper rank. SOWING AND REAPING.. Teacher! cheerfully Go to thy task; Dost thou ask Nor seek thee for rest; Teacher! hopefully Go to thy toil Each other succeed Leaflet nor flower Would spring in the mead Were the soil Ne'er with dewdrops bespread, With sunbeam and rain; Teacher! thoughtfully Go to thy trust; Ardent and free; Shall the dust Of the false dim the soul, Thou art graving so deep 2 Teacher! prayerfully Gird on thy mail, Truth shall a conflict Right to sustain. Wouldst prevail? There's a fountain above!- In sowing or reaping, Alike may be thine. M. LAUGH, BOYS! LAUGH!-Dr. Griffin, when President of Andover Theological Seminary, convened the students at his room, one evening, and told them that he had observed that they were all growing thin and dyspeptic from a neglect of the duty of laughter, and he insisted upon it that they should go through a company drill in it, then and there. The doctor was an immenseman, with great amplitude of chest, and most magisterial manner. Here," he said, to the first, " you must practice: now hear me!" and bursting out into a sonorous laugh, he fairly obliged his pupils, one by one, to join, till all were convulsed. "That will do for once," said the doctor; "and now mind you keep in practice!"--Springfield Republican. WRITING. "Hast thou a thought upon thy brain, catch it while thou canst; The writing of "compositions" is, usually, the most irksometask which the teacher imposes on his pupils. Very often it is the most disagreeable duty that he himself undertakes; and the majority of men and women do not write at all, unless driven to it by imperative necessity. Many who speak with ease, force, and correctness, in conversation or in continuous discourse, writeonly with the greatest difficulty, and, often, with sad disregard of the rules of grammar and rhetoric. This need not be so, and ought not to be so, with any one who possesses average natural ability, and has received as much discipline as is, or may be, acquired in our common schools. Aside from the muscular exertion, there is no more difficulty in writing than in speaking; nor is the one more disagreeable than the other. The real difficulty and the real irksomeness are connected with the formation of a habit of writing. That once established, there is not much exaggeration in saying that it is easier to write than not to write Every one who is accustomed to write a great deal will testify that the excitement of composition affords one of the most pleasurable sensations he ever experienced, and one which, far from palling, by frequent indulgence, is continually sought with more and more avidity. A few pages of the Journal may be usefully occupied in setting forth some of the reasons why a habit, so agreeable and so profitable, should be diligently cultivated by every pupil, every teacher, and all the members of every family. Writing secures the knowledge which one already has. This is well said in the quotation at the head of this article. Many valuable thoughts are forever lost because they are not made fast with pen and ink. They are driven out of the mind by other thoughts, and when the attempt is made to recall them, they are like the dove which went forth from Noah's ark and returned not again unto him any beyond recovery. more. What might have been a rich intellectual gem, has gone This is true, not only of the thoughts of a superior mind, like that of the statesman who kept a lighted lamp and a pen constantly by his bedside, that he might secure the thoughts which occurred to him in moments of sleeplessness, and of the great moral painter who was wont to peneil on his finger nails the grotesque conceptions which flashed into his mind while taking his daily walks; but it is true of the thoughts of every mind, small as well as great. "The commonest mind is full of thoughts; some worthy of the rarest : And could it see them fairly writ, would wonder at its wealth." What is true in regard to ideas is yet more true in regard to facts. There is hardly an individual who has not in his mind some important or interesting facts, of which all or most of his fellows are ignorant. For their sakes, as well as for his own, he should commit his knowledge to writing. Because the habit of so doing is not universal, there perishes every day a vast amount of useful information. Within the last two years, a citizen of this State, who had paid long and particular attention to a certain class of facts and had stored a great abundance of them in his memory, died, and, with the exception of what he had written on a dozen foolscap pages, his knowledge died with him. Some of it may, perhaps, be regained by great pains, but much of it is irrecoverably lost. The habit of writing would have saved most of it. Writing fixes one's thoughts and gives them precision, definite-' ness and certainty. Writing makes an exact man," says Bacon. "Writing is to a thought what a carpenter's vice is to a block of wood," says Bentham: it holds it fast while we form it into any shape we please. "To be accurate, write; to remember, write; to know thine own mind, write. Idea is a shadow that departeth, speech is fleeting as the wind, reading is an unremembered pastime, but writing is eternal." Knowledge can never be truly ours till we have appropriated it by some action of our own minds. . The best writers on property in land attribute that right to the first proprietor's having blended his own labor with the soil. Something like this is true of intellectual attainments. It is only when we have bestowed some labor upon them that we hold them by a valid title. No labor is mone effectual for this purpose than writing. It defines our knowledge by metes and bounds, and, by so doing, gives us a more absolute right to what is within those bounds. At the same time, it gives certainty to our knowledge and accuracy to our thoughts. Much of our mental furniture is in a chaotic state. Our ideas are sophistical and inconsistent, and, but for the deliberation which accompanies writing, would remain so. Writing detects and exposes these faults, as the summer sun brings to light the tares which have been all winter lurking unsuspected among the good seed. Then, they are eliminated, and our thoughts receive due form and proportion, and are not only ours, but more worthy to be ours than if they had not been subjected to this purifying process. Writing not only secures and defines our ideas, but increases them. This it does in various ways. It stimulates a man to make up the deficiencies which it continually discovers to him, in his information, his thought, his style, and his readiness of expression. It prompts him to read, that he may not be compelled to resort to his imagination for facts. It leads him to reflection, that he may seize and confine the fugitive thoughts which are fluttering just beyond his reach. It leads him to study expression and arrangement; arrangement which makes diamonds to differ from charcoal, and transforms ragged bits of stone into smooth and beautiful mosaic. It revives knowledge that was departing out of memory, and strengthens the power of association, that “commune vinculum" which Cicero so beautifully describes as holding together all sciences and all subjects of thought. when we turn a faucet, the water in how many soever connected pipes begins to move towards it; so, when we write, everything that we have ever read and thought, though on subjects altogether diverse from the matter in hand, is attracted towards it and is. ready to pour itself out, if need be, upon that matter. More As, |