Whatever is common, is lightly regarded; and thus it happens, that while great stress is laid upon the sin which must be occasional, that which meets us every day passes as a venial offence, as involving less criminality. Thus it is that untruthfulness permeates all words, all actions; thus it is that it creeps into our schools, manifesting itself in underhanded deceit, artful suppression of the truth, skilful prevarication and open. falsehood.

But the stronger the motives which induce to untruthfulness, the more universal the times which admit of it; and the more forcible the temptations to think lightly of it, just so much the more becomes it our prerogative as teachers, as men whose great duty it is to present to the eyes of children a spotless example, and to instil into their hearts precepts of purity, to struggle earnestly and manfully against the crying evil of our schools. To none more than to us is addressed the command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." While the mind is pliant, while the habits are taking root, while principles and tendencies are developing, then it becomes the task of the teacher to straighten the twig, to dress the field, and make all things ready for a harvest of manly piety and brave persistency in good. We have not so much to do with ethics as with practical morality. While we are thankful for the aid which Reid and Stewart, Locke and Browne have given us in laying deep and firmly our foundation, we will look to our Master and our elder Brother for sympathy with us in our work, and so go trustfully on and rear the superstructure. Once the teacher was expected but to impart crude knowledge; in later days he has been allowed to give culture to the taste, and strength to the intellect; but now it is his glorious privilege not only to do all this, but to give grace to character. Let us not be forgetful of our high calling.

It is not my aim in this essay to labor after any untried method to banish untruthfulness from the school-room, but to show that we have the key in our possession which will unlock to us all the treasures which we seek. The tools we use are good; the trouble lies in this, that we are bungling workmen. Complaining of our tools, we but confess our own want of skill.

It is folly to suppose that we can reduce all who are under our charge to the inane piety which is the result of thin blood or poor digestion. No course of training can render all pupils inoffensive and uncomplaining. I should be the last to wish that children should lay aside their youthful sports, and assume, in hours devoted to mirth, the sedateness of mature years. For one, I must say, at the risk of giving offence, that I most heartily deprecate those books, which, under a pretence of teaching early piety, present some example of insipid excel

lence propped up by disease. No; piety is not girlishness, and those men do not "render to Cæsar the things which be Cæsar's," who laud that feeble virtue which has no temptation to fall, but award no praise to ruddy cheerfulness, to boyish ardor and uncompromising truthfulness.

In our schools we have to build on human nature, with its firm rocks, here and there its shifting sands. We are not to look for, and we should not be disappointed if we do not find, much of that quiet acquiescence, that tame submission to authority which is not compatible with spirit enough to tell a lie, and hardly so with ability enough to frame a deceit. We are to meet with zeal and slothfulness, with intelligence and dulness, with the proofs of this parent's care and of that one's neglect. We have to educate the human heart to truthfulness by a natural process.

And the first thing which we should bear in mind is this, that scholars are capable of appreciating the excellence and the beauty of truthfulness. Indeed, I suspect that boys under good instruction at home, have as keen a sense of this beauty as adults. That remark of George Washington, "I cannot tell a lie, father," would have struck a brother with the same power as it fell on that father's ear. I am not authorized by experience to claim for boys a quicker realization of the beauty of which I speak, than men generally possess, though I see not how that claim could fail to be sustained. Boys have little appreciation of the merit of intellectual power or sagacity, but much native candor, and, in most cases, generous inclinations. In reading such a work as Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop, the man will have his sympathies enlisted in favor of the subtleminded but lying Quilp, while the boy will lose sight of his ability in contempt for his dark deceit, and will look with admiration on the native truthfulness of Kit Nubbles. If we look at any instance in our personal history, when as boys we saw our schoolmate tried by temptation, and then by one bold effort rise superior to it, and speak the truth with fearlessness, we cannot fail to recall our admiring sympathy. It is a libel upon childhood to assert that it is more pleased with cunning than with frankness. Girls have less openness of disposition than boys, it is true; but we may rely on this, that both boys and girls will be inwardly drawn more closely to that companion who is always truthful, than to the one who is habitually false.

If we recognize the truth of this; more than this, if we feel it, it may greatly modify our conduct as teachers. We are too apt to think that children highly prize and secretly extol the ability to deceive, but we greatly err when we assert that the cause of this estimation is their proclivity to falsehood. I would not arrogate for children a larger share of virtuous prin

ciple than they possess, but I would insist that their admiration of the ability which can frame a deceit capable of eluding the teacher's penetration should not be confounded with the love of untruthfulness.

And here I would turn aside a moment from my direct course, but not from my main subject, in order to condemn the habit so common, I might almost say universal, of winking at prevarication, and the suppression of truth, and of entertaining the appearance of being deceived, in order to avoid the necessity of inflicting punishment. Perhaps of all the evils of the school-room, this is the worst. In this, the teacher plays the liar's part, and offers too a direct bounty on untruthfulness. We must not expect too much from children. They naturally regard the teacher as one set over them as their governor; they are strongly tempted to think of their position relative to his, as that of two rogues, each trying to outwit the other, and when the teacher, in order to avoid trouble, and make his own labor light, is willing to grant them the consciousness of advantage, he is giving a stimulus to untruthfulness whose power he cannot measure. As the teacher values his influence, he should follow up at once, no matter at what sacrifice of intellectual instruction, every instance of deceit, however trivial.

He cannot labor too earnestly to remove, in the minds of his scholars, any distinction which they may be inclined to make with regard to the degrees of sin involved in falsehood, prevarication, and the suppression of truth. By making the punishment the same for all, he should earnestly inculcate the equality of these offences. I apprehend that we cannot weigh the amount of evil done by those teachers who use such expressions as "a great lie," " a formidable falsehood," "a gross prevarication." The tendency of all such phrases is to make the widest deviation from truth the standard, and not perfect purity of thought. Our children must feel that, if a distinction must be made, the "greatest liar" is not he who, from habit, drops broad falsehoods from his tongue, but he who, with his own will, first steps, be it never so slightly, from the way of truth.

Acknowledging that children are naturally quick to mark truthfulness in their companions, and ready to admire it, we can but confess it our duty to do all in our power to train them to a constant and high estimation of its value in themselves. While we are prompt to punish those who are untruthful, we may call repeated attention to those instances, in ancient and modern history, where men of all nations, and of every creed, have given their testimony to the beauty of truth. Why should we read, in our schools, of Darius and Fabricius,

Scævola and Cato, unless we are to profit by those words of theirs, which show how fair a thing is truth, and what a gem it is to set off even the heathen character?

And not only should the teacher call his pupils' attention to examples drawn from actual biography, but he should also, by the exercise of a little imagination, present to them situations of temptation in which they may find themselves placed. Let him picture the victory of truthfulness, and show that such a conquest, though bloodless, involves much power, and frequently is as great in its effects upon individual character as those of nations upon history. What physical courage is, boys feel intuitively; what moral courage is, they can be made to understand. The great reason why boys and boyish men have no appreciation of moral courage is, that they so rarely exercise it, and take occasion to test its worth.

When a child has arrived at such maturity as to see the excellence of moral courage in others, which, as I said in the outset, is at an early age with boys under a judicious mother's care, the teacher must devise ways to call the power into practice. This step requires much discretion. If taken wisely, it will give great solidity to the scholar's character, but if hastily, it may shipwreck a soul. There should no strong temptation be put before the child, but rather an opportunity to speak the truth with manfulness. An instance of what I mean would be this. James comes to school, some morning, tardy. His heavy tread and swollen eyes tell the story of oversleeping. How often have I seen the next step of the teacher missed! He tries to remedy the evil by throwing ridicule upon the boy, and holding him up to the laughter of the school. And so he bluntly asks, "Well, James, how is this?" The boy of course gives no answer. Indeed, none was wished. "Not up early enough, were you?" The boy sullenly answers "No," and the scholars laugh. If punctuality is to be purchased at the cost of candor, give me the latter. The truth, spoken as it has been by the boy, has no merit. It hardly deserves so high a name as truth. How much better for the teacher to ask, in a pleasant way, if he wishes to allude to the cause of tardiness, "James, did you see the sun rise this morning?" and, in nine cases out of ten, the answer will be a ready "No, sir." The antithesis involved in the question gives it point, and, while sharp, it does not rankle. If the boy is a tried one, I would ask, in a manner which would demand but one answer, "Have you any excuse to plead, James?" A boy of real moral courage will answer with a willing " No, sir," while one who has not been trained to a ready and truthful reply, will perhaps speak the syllables, but in such a manner as to convey the impression that he has an excuse, but lacks moral courage to state

it. Teachers do a great wrong to the child by asking, in such a case, "James, what is your excuse? for the silence which must follow is perilous, thrice perilous, to his truthfulness. No questions should be asked in the school-room which do not demand a ready answer. By always giving such, the teacher may open a fine field for the culture of moral courage, while, by taking the opposite course, he oftentimes stimulates the youthful mind to search for foundationless excuses, and even to utter deliberate falsehoods.

I have already arrived at the limits which I assigned to myself, but the magnitude of the subject, and the many wrong directions which the injudicious teacher takes in dealing with this formidable enemy, untruthfulness, constrain me to add a few words more.

I would utterly condemn the habit, which is so common, of praising the child who is truthful. I do not say that I would not blame him who is untruthful, but would censure with words, and punish with blows, if these were needed. But the laudation of a pupil's honesty will never establish truthfulness on a right basis. It may ensure some good results, but those same results should spring solely from a sense of duty. There is to be no teacher through life to encourage and praise. The reward is to spring up in the man's breast, and so should it in the child's. The sense of duty is not all-powerful in a child, it is true; nay, it is weak; but, cherished by a teacher's constant, and not only constant, but zealous efforts, even in the child it may blossom and bear good fruit. It is by no means absurd to pay a child in dollars for reading the Bible through, for a passage may strike the mind and modify the life. It is not absurd to hire a child's candor and pay for it with praise. But if we can have the Bible read, and the truth spoken, in other ways, more noble, nay, more godlike, let us by all means use them.

Great discretion must be used in trusting children. Many read the words, "It is a shame to cheat Arnold; he always believes us," hurry to their schools with the false interpretation which they give them, and follow them with as much discrimination as success. O that teachers could be warned off from this dangerous ground! Would that they might see all of Dr. Arnold, his school and his character, before they interpret his words. This placing of young minds in positions of danger, this expecting of them to stand alone while at best they can but totter, this risking of character on the probability of giving it strength,-would that our teachers might realize its peril. Where one mind comes out unharmed, two are maimed for life.

If we would be able to say to our pupils, as Dr. Arnold said, and said successfully, "of course, I believe you," it