the writer's
name, and unimpeded by any prejudice which may exist against him.

The following articles, which were really offered for such a purpose in
the Mount Vernon school, will serve as specimens to illustrate the
actual operation of the plan. One or two of them were written by
teachers. I do not know the authors of the others. I do not offer them
as remarkable compositions: every teacher will see that they are not so.
The design of inserting them is merely to show that the ordinary
literary ability to be found in every school may be turned to useful
account by simply opening a channel for it, and to furnish such teachers
as may be inclined to try the experiment the means of making the plan
clearly understood by their pupils.

MARKS OF A BAD SCHOLAR.

"At the time when she should be ready to take her seat at school, she
commences preparation for leaving home. To the extreme annoyance of
those about her, all is now hurry, and bustle, and ill-humor. Thorough
search is to be made for every book or paper for which she has occasion;
some are found in one place, some in another, and others are forgotten
altogether. Being finally equipped, she casts her eye at the clock,
hopes to be in tolerable good season (notwithstanding that the hour for
opening the school has already arrived), and sets out in the most
violent hurry.

"After so much haste, she is unfitted for attending properly to the
duties of the school until a considerable time after her arrival. If
present at the devotional exercises, she finds it difficult to command
her attention even when desirous of so doing, and her deportment at this
hour is, accordingly, marked with an unbecoming listlessness and
abstraction.

"When called to recitations, she recollects that some task was assigned,
which, till that moment, she had forgotten; of others she had mistaken
the extent, most commonly thinking them to be shorter than her
companions suppose. In her answers to questions with which she should be
familiar, she always manifests more or less of hesitation, and what she
ventures to express is very commonly in the form of a question. In
these, as in all exercises, there is an inattention to general
instructions. Unless what is said be addressed particularly to herself,
her eyes are directed toward another part of the room; it may be, her
thoughts are employed about something not at all connected with the
school. If reproved by her teacher for negligence in any res