G.

There is a most singular contrariety of opinion prevailing in the
community, in regard to the _pleasantness_ of the business of teaching.
Some teachers go to their daily task, merely upon compulsion: they
regard it as intolerable drudgery. Others love the work: they hover
around the school-room as long as they can, and never cease to think,
and seldom to talk, of their delightful labors.

Unfortunately there are too many of the former class, and the first
object, which, in this work, I shall attempt to accomplish, is to show
my readers, especially those who have been accustomed to look upon the
business of teaching as a weary and heartless toil, how it happens, that
it is, in any case, so pleasant. The human mind is always, essentially,
the same. That which is tedious and joyless to one, will be so to
another, if pursued in the same way, and under the same circumstances.
And teaching, if it is pleasant, animating, and exciting to one, may be
so to all.

I am met, however, at the outset, in my effort to show why it is that
teaching is ever a pleasant work, by the want of a name for a certain
faculty or capacity of the human mind, through which most of the
enjoyment of teaching finds its avenue. Every mind is so constituted as
to take a positive pleasure in the exercise of ingenuity in adapting
means to an end, and in watching their operation;--in accomplishing by
the intervention of instruments, what we could not accomplish
without;--in devising, (when we see an object to be effected, which is
too great for our _direct_ and _immediate_ power) and setting at work,
some _instrumentality_, which may be sufficient to accomplish it.

It is said, that, when the steam engine was first put into operation,
such was the imperfection of the machinery, that a boy was necessarily
stationed at it, to open and shut alternately the cock, by which the
steam was now admitted, and now shut out, from the cylinder. One such
boy, after patiently doing his work for many days, contrived to connect
this stop-cock with some of the moving parts of the engine, by a wire,
in such a manner, that the engine itself did the work which had been
entrusted to him; and after seeing that the whole business would go
regularly forward, he left the wire in charge, and went away to play.

Such is the story. Now if it is true, how much pleasure the boy must
have experienced, in devising and witnessing the successful operation of
his scheme; I do not me