such pretences,--but really and truly love them.

Many teachers, however, sincerely love their scholars, and yet do not
succeed in winning their affections. Something in their manner and
appearance is repulsive. There is in the face of some good people a hard
and forbidding look, at which the heart takes alarm and retires within
itself. The young heart, like the young buds in spring-time, requires an
atmosphere of warmth and sunshine. If we would draw forth their warm
affections towards us, we must not only feel love towards them in our
hearts, but we must wear sunshine in our faces. A pleasant smile, a
loving word, a soft, endearing tone of the voice, goes a great way with
a child, especially where it is not put on, but springs from a loving
heart.

Some teachers in avoiding this hard, repulsive manner, run to the
opposite extreme, and lose the respect of their scholars by undue
familiarity. Children do not expect you to become their playmate and
fellow, before giving you their love and confidence. Their native
tendency is to look up. They yearn for repose upon one superior to
themselves. Only, when the tender heart of youth thus looks up, let it
not be into a region filled with clouds and cold, but into a sky
everywhere pervaded with a clear, steady, warm sunlight. Let there be no
frown upon your brow, no harsh or angry word upon your lips, no exacting
sternness in your eye. Let the love which you feel in your heart beam
forth naturally and spontaneously in loving looks and words, and you
need not fear but that you will meet with a response.

XX.

THE OBEDIENCE OF CHILDREN.

There is much misapprehension as to the true nature of obedience.
Wherein does obedience really consist? What is its essence?

Merely doing a specified act, which has been required, is not
necessarily an act of obedience. A father may have a rule of his
household that the children shall rise in the morning at five o'clock. A
son who habitually disregards this rule, may rise at the appointed time
on a particular morning, in order to join a companion on a fishing
excursion, or for some object connected solely with his own pleasure and
convenience. Here the external act is the one required. He rises at the
hour enjoined by his father's command. But his doing so has no reference
to his father's wishes. It is not in any sense an act of obedience.
Something more than mere external compliance with a rule or a command is
needed to constitu