carefully pocketed, and never looked at again. Make the boys reserve a
good wide margin for the corrections. Underline all their mistakes,
and, under your eyes, make them correct the mistakes themselves.

* * * * *

However well up you may be in your subjects, you are sure to find
yourself occasionally tripping. The derivation of a certain word will
escape you for a moment, or the right translation of another will not
come to your mind quickly enough. With grown-up and intelligent young
fellows in advanced classes, no need to apologise. But with little boys
you must remember that you are an oracle. Never for a moment let them
doubt your infallibility; call up all the resources of your ingenuity,
and find a way out of the difficulty. So a good actor, whose memory
fails him for the time, calls upon his imagination to supply its place.
And must not any man, who would gain and keep the ear of a mixed
audience, be a bit of an actor, let his theatre be the hustings, the
church, or the class-room? Has not a master to appear perfectly cross
when he is perfectly cool, or perfectly cool when he is perfectly
cross? Is not this acting?

It once fell to my unhappy lot to be requested to take an arithmetic
class twice a week, during the temporary absence of a mathematical
master. In my youth I was a little of a mathematician, but figures I
was always bad at. As for English sums, with their bewildering
complications of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings, which that
practical people still fondly cling to, it has always been a subject of
wonder to me how the English themselves do them. How I piloted those
dear boys through Bills of Parcels I don't know; but it is a fact that
we got on pretty well till we reached "Stocks." Here my path grew very
thorny.

One morning the boys all came with the same sad story. None had been
able to do one of the sums I had given them from the book. They had all
tried; their brothers had tried; their fathers had tried; not one could
do it.

A short look at it convinced me that I should have no more chance of
success than all those Britons, young and old, but it would never do to
let my pupils know this. They must suppose that those few moments had
been sufficient for me to master the sum in. So, assuming my most
solemn voice, I said:

"Why, boys, do you mean to tell me you can not do such a simple sum as
this?"

"No, we can't, sir," was the general cry