l neighbours. There is danger
that his resentment may be roused a little, and that his mind will
assume a hostile attitude at once towards such individuals; so that he
will enter upon his work rather with a desire to seek a collision with
them, or at least with secret feelings of defiance towards
them,--feelings which will lead to that kind of unbending
perpendicularity in his demeanour towards them which will almost
inevitably lead to a collision. Now this is wrong. There is indeed a
point where firm resistance to unreasonable demands becomes a duty. But
as a general principle it is most unquestionably true, that it is the
teacher's duty _to accommodate himself to the character and expectations
of his employers_, not to face and brave them. Those italicized words
_may be_ understood to mean something which would be entirely wrong; but
in the sense in which I mean to use them, there can be no question that
they indicate the proper path for one employed by others to do work
_for them_, in all cases, to pursue. If therefore the teacher finds by
his inquiries into the state of his district that there are some
peculiar difficulties and dangers there, let him not cherish a
disposition to face and resist them, but to avoid them. Let him go with
an intention to soothe rather than to irritate feelings which have been
wounded before,--to comply with the wishes of all so far as he can, even
if they are not entirely reasonable,--and while he endeavours to elevate
the standard and correct the opinions prevailing among his employers, by
any means in his power, to aim at doing it gently; and in a tone and
manner suitable to the relation he sustains;--in a word, let him
skilfully _avoid_ the dangers of his navigation, not obstinately run his
ship against a rock on purpose, on the ground that the rock has no
business to be there.

This is the spirit then with which these preliminary inquiries, in
regard to the patrons of the school, ought to be made. We come now to a
second point.

2. It will assist the young teacher very much in his first day's labors,
if he takes measures for seeing and conversing with some of the older or
more intelligent scholars, on the day or evening before he begins his
school, with a view of obtaining from them some acquaintance with the
internal arrangements and customs of the school. The object of this is
to obtain the same kind of information with respect to the interior of
the school, that was recommended