s,
where to act with adequate promptitude was to be unpopular. Thus, I
must look only to myself.

Imprimis--it was clear as the day that this swinish multitude were not
to be driven by force. They were to be humoured, borne with very
patiently: a courteous though sedate manner impressed them; a very rare
flash of raillery did good. Severe or continuous mental application
they could not, or would not, bear: heavy demand on the memory, the
reason, the attention, they rejected point-blank. Where an English girl
of not more than average capacity and docility would quietly take a
theme and bind herself to the task of comprehension and mastery, a
Labassecourienne would laugh in your face, and throw it back to you
with the phrase,--"Dieu, que c'est difficile! Je n'en veux pas. Cela
m'ennuie trop."

A teacher who understood her business would take it back at once,
without hesitation, contest, or expostulation--proceed with even
exaggerated care to smoothe every difficulty, to reduce it to the level
of their understandings, return it to them thus modified, and lay on
the lash of sarcasm with unsparing hand. They would feel the sting,
perhaps wince a little under it; but they bore no malice against this
sort of attack, provided the sneer was not _sour_, but _hearty_, and
that it held well up to them, in a clear, light, and bold type, so that
she who ran might read, their incapacity, ignorance, and sloth. They
would riot for three additional lines to a lesson; but I never knew
them rebel against a wound given to their self-respect: the little they
had of that quality was trained to be crushed, and it rather liked the
pressure of a firm heel than otherwise.

By degrees, as I acquired fluency and freedom in their language, and
could make such application of its more nervous idioms as suited their
case, the elder and more intelligent girls began rather to like me in
their way: I noticed that whenever a pupil had been roused to feel in
her soul the stirring of worthy emulation, or the quickening of honest
shame, from that date she was won. If I could but once make their
(usually large) ears burn under their thick glossy hair, all was
comparatively well. By-and-by bouquets began to be laid on my desk in
the morning; by way of acknowledgment for this little foreign
attention, I used sometimes to walk with a select few during
recreation. In the course of conversation it befel once or twice that I
made an unpremeditated attempt to rec