ch says, "you are
most unintelligent, but listen to ME and there may yet be hope that you
will understand." This leaves the "poor creatures" of the class still
unmoved and unenlightened; "the child is not awakened," while the more
sensitive minds are irritated; they can feel it as an impertinence
without quite knowing why they are hurt. It is a question of manners and
consideration which is perceptible to them, for they like what is
best--sympathy and suggestiveness rather than hammering in. They can help
each other by their simple insight into these things when they read
aloud, and if a reading lesson in class is conducted as an exercise in
criticism it is full of interest. The frank good-nature and gravity of
twelve-year-old critics makes their operations quite painless, and they
are accepted with equal good humour and gravity, no one wasting any
emotion and a great deal of good sense being exchanged.

Conversation, as conversation, is hard to teach, we can only lead the
way and lay down a few principles which keep it in the right path. These
commonplaces of warning, as old as civilization itself, belong to
manners and to fundamental unselfishness, but obvious as they are they
have to be said and to be repeated and enforced until they become
matters of course. Not to seem bored, not to interrupt, not to
contradict, not to make personal remarks, not to talk of oneself (some
one was naive enough to say "then what is there to talk of"), not to get
heated and not to look cold, not to do all the talking and not to be
silent, not to advance if the ground seems uncertain, and to be
sensitively attentive to what jars--all these and other things are
troublesome to obtain, but exceedingly necessary. And even observing
them all we may be just as far from conversation as before; how often
among English people, through shyness or otherwise, it simply faints
from inanition. We can at least teach that a first essential is to have
something to say, and that the best preparation of mind is thought and
reading and observation, to be interested in many things, and to give
enough personal application to a few things as to have something worth
saying about them.

By testing in writing every step of an educational course a great deal
of command over all acquired materials may be secured. As our girls grow
older, essay-writing becomes the most powerful means for fashioning
their minds and bringing out their individual characteristics.

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