In all cases, little and great, make this a principle--to consider well
before you begin to act, but after you have begun to act, never stop to
consider. Resolve as deliberately as you please, but be sure to keep
your resolution, whether a wise one or an unwise one, after it is once
made. Never allow yourself to reconsider the question of getting up,
after the morning has come, except it be for some unforeseen
circumstance. Get up for that time, and be more careful how you make
resolutions again.

17. TOPICS.--The plan of the Topic Exercise, as we called it, is this.
Six or seven topics are given out, information upon which is to be
obtained from any source, and communicated verbally before the whole
school, or sometimes before a class formed for this purpose the next
day. The subjects are proposed both by teacher and scholars, and if
approved, adopted. The exercise is intended to be voluntary, but ought
to be managed in a way sufficiently interesting to induce all to join.

At the commencement of the exercise the teacher calls upon all who have
any information in regard to the topic assigned--suppose, for example,
it is _Alabaster_--to rise. Perhaps twenty individuals out of forty
rise. The teacher may perhaps say to those in their seats,

"Do you not know any thing of this subject? Have you neither seen nor
heard of alabaster, and had no means of ascertaining any thing in regard
to it? If you have, you ought to rise. It is not necessary that you
should state a fact altogether new and unheard-of, but if you tell me
its color, or some of the uses to which it is applied, you will be
complying with my request."

After these remarks, perhaps a few more rise, and possibly the whole
school. Individuals are then called upon at random, each to state only
one particular in regard to the topic in question. This arrangement is
made so as to give all an opportunity to speak. If any scholar, after
having mentioned one fact, has something still farther to communicate,
she remains standing till called upon again. As soon as an individual
has exhausted her stock of information, or if the facts that she
intended to mention are stated by another, she takes her seat.

The topics at first most usually selected are the common objects by
which we are surrounded--for example, glass, iron, mahogany, and the
like. The list will gradually extend itself, until it will embrace a
large number of subjects.

The object of this exercise is to