teacher feels is a sort of
_moral responsibility for the conduct of others_. If his pupils do
wrong, he feels almost personal responsibility for it. As he walks out
some afternoon, wearied with his labors, and endeavoring to forget, for
a little time, all his cares, he comes upon a group of boys in rude and
noisy quarrels, or engaged in mischief of some sort, and his heart
sinks within him. It is hard enough for any one to witness their bad
conduct with a spirit unruffled and undisturbed, but for their teacher
it is perhaps impossible. He feels _responsible_; in fact, he is
responsible. If his scholars are disorderly, or negligent, or idle, or
quarrelsome, he feels _condemned himself_ almost as if he were himself
the actual transgressor.

This difficulty is, in a great degree, peculiar to a teacher. A
physician is called upon to prescribe for a patient; he examines the
case, and writes his prescription. When this is done his duty is ended;
and whether the patient obeys the prescription and lives, or neglects it
and dies, the physician feels exonerated from all responsibility. He
may, and in some cases does, feel _anxious concern_, and may regret the
infatuation by which, in some unhappy case, a valuable life may be
hazarded or destroyed. But he feels no _moral responsibility_ for
another's guilt.

It is so with all the other employments in life. They do, indeed, often
bring men into collision with other men. But, though sometimes vexed and
irritated by the conduct of a neighbor, a client, or a patient, they
feel not half the bitterness of the solicitude and anxiety which come to
the teacher through the criminality of his pupil. In ordinary cases he
not only feels responsible for efforts, but for their results; and when,
notwithstanding all his efforts, his pupils will do wrong, his spirit
sinks with an intensity of anxious despondency which none but a teacher
can understand.

This feeling of something very like _moral accountability for the guilt
of other persons_ is a continual burden. The teacher in the presence of
the pupil never is free from it. It links him to them by a bond which
perhaps he ought not to sunder, and which he can not sunder if he would.
And sometimes, when those committed to his charge are idle, or
faithless, or unprincipled, it wears away his spirits and his health
together. I think there is nothing analogous to this moral connection
between teacher and pupil unless it be in the case of a paren