chanic. A physician
may spend all his waking-hours in visiting patients, and feel little
more than healthy fatigue. The reason is that in all these employments,
and in fact in most of the employments of life, there is so much to
diversify, so many little incidents constantly occurring to animate and
relieve, and so much bodily exercise, which alternates with, and
suspends the fatigues of the mind, that the labors may be much longer
continued, and with less cessation, and yet the health not suffer. But
the teacher, while engaged in his work, has his mind continually on the
stretch. There is little to relieve, little respite, and he is almost
entirely deprived of bodily exercise. He must, consequently, limit his
hours of attending to his business, or his health will soon sink under
labors which Providence never intended the human mind to bear.

There is another circumstance which facilitates the progress of the
teacher. It is a fact that all this general progress has a direct and
immediate bearing upon his pursuits. A lawyer may read in an evening an
interesting book of travels, and find nothing to help him with his case,
the next day, in court,--but almost every fact which the teacher thus
learns, will come _at once into use,_ in some of his recitations at
school. We do not mean to imply by this that the members of the legal
profession have not need of a great variety and extent of knowledge;
they doubtless have. It is simply in the _directness_ and _certainty_,
with which the teacher's knowledge may be applied to his purpose, that
the business of teaching has the advantage over every other pursuit.

This fact now has a very important influence in encouraging, and leading
forward the teacher, to make constant intellectual progress, for every
step brings at once a direct reward.

10. THE CHESTNUT BURR. _A story for school-boys._[E] One fine pleasant
morning, in the fall of the year, the master was walking along towards
school, and he saw three or four boys under a large chestnut tree,
gathering chestnuts.

[Footnote E: Originally written for a periodical.]

One of the boys was sitting upon the ground, trying to open some
chestnut burrs, which he had knocked off from the tree. The burrs were
green, and he was trying to open them by pounding them with a stone.

He was a very impatient boy and was scolding, in a loud angry tone,
against the burrs. He did not see, he said, what in the world chestnuts
were made to grow