children's wills to face restraint, to know that they
cannot cast themselves at random and adrift in the pursuit of art, that
their ideals must be more severe than those of others, and that they
have less excuse than others if they allow these ideals to be debased.
They ought to learn to be proud of this restraint, not to believe
themselves thwarted or feel themselves galled by it, but to understand
that it stands for a higher freedom by the side of which ease and
unrestraint are more like servitude than liberty; it stands for the
power to refuse the evil and choose the good; it stands for intellectual
and moral freedom of choice, holding in check the impulse and
inclination that are prompted from within and invited from without to
escape from control.

The best teaching in this is to show what is best, and to give the
principles by which it is to be judged. To talk of what is bad, or less
good, even by way of warning, is less persuasive and calculated even to
do harm to girls whose temper of mind is often "quite contrary."
Warnings are wearisome to them, and when they refer to remote dangers,
partly guessed at, mostly unknown, they even excite the spirit of
adventure to go and find out for themselves, just as in childhood
repeated warnings and threats of the nursery-maids and maiden aunts are
the very things which set the spirit of enterprise off on the voyage of
discovery, a fact which the head nurse and the mother have found out
long ago, and so have learnt to refrain from these attractive
advertisements of danger. So it is with teachers. We learn by experience
that a trumpet blast of warning wakes the echoes at first and rouses all
that is to be roused, but also that if it is often repeated it dulls the
ear and calls forth no response at all. Quiet positive teaching
convinces children; to show them the best things attracts them, and once
their true allegiance is given to the best, they have more security
within themselves than in many danger signals set up for their safety.
What is most persuasive of all is a whole-hearted love for real truth
and beauty in those who teach them. Their own glow of enthusiasm is
caught, light from light, and taste from taste, and ideal from ideal;
warning may be lost sight of, but this is living spirit and will last.

What children can accomplish by the excellent methods of teaching
drawing and painting which are coming into use now, it is difficult to
say. Talent as well as circumsta