next lesson. It is a very
great improvement upon your common mode. Are you willing to do it?"

"Yes sir;" say the boys.

"You will get tired, I have no doubt. In fact, I do not expect you will
succeed, the first day, very well. You will probably become restless and
uneasy, before the end of the lesson, especially the smaller boys. I
must excuse it, I suppose, if you do, as it will be the first time."

By such methods as these, the teacher will certainly secure a majority
in favor of all his plans. But perhaps some experienced teacher, who
knows from his own repeated difficulties with bad boys, what sort of
spirits the teacher of district schools has sometimes to deal with, may
ask, as he reads this,

"Do you expect that such a method as this, will succeed in keeping your
school in order? Why, there are boys in almost every school, whom you
would no more coax into obedience and order in this way, than you would
persuade the northeast wind to change its course by reasoning."

I know there are. And my readers are requested to bear in mind, that my
object is not now to show, how the whole government of the school may be
secured, but how one important advantage may be gained, which will
assist in accomplishing the object. All I should expect or hope for, by
such measures as these, is _to interest and gain over to our side, the
majority_. What is to be done with those who cannot be reached by such
kinds of influence, I shall endeavor presently to show. The object now
is, simply to gain the _majority_,--to awaken a general interest, which
you can make effectual in promoting your plans, and thus to narrow the
field of discipline, by getting those right, who can be got right by
such measures.

Thus securing a majority to be on your side in the general
administration of the school, is absolutely indispensable to success. A
teacher may, by the force of mere authority, so control his pupils, as
to preserve order in the school-room, and secure a tolerable progress in
study, but the heart will not be in it. The progress in knowledge must
accordingly be, in ordinary cases, slow, and the cultivation of moral
principle must be, in such a case, entirely neglected. The principles of
duty cannot be inculcated by fear; and though pain and terror must, in
many instances, be called in to coerce an individual offender, whom
milder measures will not reach, yet these agents, and others like them,
can never be successfully employed, as the