which the teacher takes of the
guilt of the pupil is concerned; every palliating consideration must be
felt. It must be firm and decided in regard to the necessity of a
change, and the determination of the teacher to effect it. It must also
be open and frank; no insinuations, no hints, no surmises, but plain,
honest, open dealing.

In many cases the communication may be made most delicately and most
successfully in writing. The more delicately you touch the feelings of
your pupils, the more tender these feelings will become. Many a teacher
hardens and stupefies the moral sense of his pupils by the harsh and
rough exposures to which he drags out the private feelings of the heart.
A man may easily produce such a state of feeling in his schoolroom, that
to address even the gentlest reproof to any individual, in the hearing
of the next, would be a most severe punishment; and, on the other hand,
he may so destroy that sensitiveness that his vociferated reproaches
will be as unheeded as the idle wind.

If, now, the teacher has taken the course recommended in this
chapter--if he has, by his general influence in the school, done all in
his power to bring the majority of his pupils to the side of order and
discipline--if he has then studied, attentively and impartially, the
characters of those who can not thus be led--if he has endeavored to
make them his friends, and to acquire, by every means, a personal
influence over them--if, finally, when they do wrong, he goes plainly,
but in a gentle and delicate manner, to them, and lays before them the
whole case--if he has done all this, he has gone as far as moral
influence will carry him. My opinion is, that this course, faithfully
and judiciously pursued, will, in almost all instances, succeed; but it
will not in all; and where it fails, there must be other, and more
vigorous and decided measures. What these measures of restraint or
punishment shall be must depend upon the circumstances of the case; but
in resorting to them, the teacher must be decided and unbending.

The course above recommended is not trying lax and inefficient measures
for a long time in hopes of their being ultimately successful, and then,
when they are found not to be so, changing the policy. There should be,
through the whole, the tone and manner of _authority_, not of
_persuasion_. The teacher must be a _monarch_, and, while he is gentle
and forbearing, always looking on the favorable side of conduct so f