in the far-off South; and many a former pupil of mine, endeared to my heart, now lies mingling his ashes with Southern soil. Had we at the North been anticoërcionists, a rebel flag to-day would have flaunted from Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill; polluting the air, and disgracing the principles of New England. There are rebellious spirits at this hour among our youth who would, if they could, raise the flag of insubordination over many of our educational institutions, and flaunt it defiantly in our very faces.

It is difficult to enumerate all the methods by which a school should be disciplined. Methods must vary in different schools, and in different teachers. Ask a man how he would play a game of chess, or a general how he would fight a battle! No two battles are fought exactly alike; no two games of chess are identical. Your methods must vary with the varying elements, and the ever varying movements of your opponents. Discipline exists in the man. He must be equal to all emergencies. He must have brains to comprehend all issues, and energics to meet them. School discipline, as well as war, is a science. Civilians did not succeed upon the battle-field as generals, neither could many who criticize teachers so severely, succeed in the school-room.

A teacher can seize upon the most trivial incident to aid him in discipline. A ray of sunlight, darting across the room, can be directed by the skilful

teacher, so that it shall throw its cheering rays into the children's hearts. Teachers may refer to cloudy weather outside, to induce scholars to have pleasant weather within doors. Ever varying methods must be used to touch their hearts and stimulate their mental activities. Government must be fresh, spontaneous, out-gushing; always, however, under the control of a sound judgment: it must fit the man, the pupils, the hour, the occasion, all the existing circumstances. No rules or methods, studied and memorized, will ever make a good disciplinarian. Each teacher must study for himself the daily problems that arise. He will find at least, in some schools that the formula, Moral suasion equals success, will not solve all the disciplinary problems that arise. He will learn that he must have as many equations as there are unknown quantities.

While I believe in compulsory obedience, let me say, that we should never forget that physical chastisement is only a temporary expedient: it should never be regarded as an end. It is only a means to an end. The child is never really reformed by physical punishment, per se. It only puts him in such a condition that intellectual and moral forces can be made operative. This condition can never be secured in some natures, until they have been physically subdued. To subdue rebels, on the battlefield, is one thing; to reconstruct them, quite an

other: but the one must precede the other. So with some rebellious spirits in the school-room, — they must be subdued by force, ere they can be reconstructed. Some pupils consider their teachers' forbearance towards them as an evidence of their timidity. They regard their instructors, just as the South regarded the North before the war. Hundreds of such children attend our schools to-day; and their number is rapidly increasing, under the stimulus of unwise parental influences and the seemingly growing distrust of the public in their

teachers.

Why cannot parents and the community understand that, if they weaken the power of the teacher, and fill their children's minds with a disrespect for him and his authority, they thereby create the necessity for more punishment and severer discipline? If parents would save their children, they must sustain their teachers. When a great work is to be done, men must have power; they must be sustained by public sentiment. In the dark and trying hours of our revolution, Congress gave Washington almost unlimited power. Did he abuse it? In our recent terrible struggle, did not President Lincoln use wisely and well the mighty powers placed in his hands? To be sure, power intrusted to our Presidents can be, and has been, abused'; but in the long run you gain far more than

you lose, by strengthening the hands and encouraging the hearts of those placed in offices of trust and responsibility. Teachers, to do their work effectively and well, must be trusted by parents, committees, and the community generally. All may not be worthy of trust, we know; let those that are not be at once removed, and competent ones put in their places. Personal vigilance by parents, as well as committees, over our schools, will do vastly more good than standing aloof and unjustly criticizing them from the basis of transient rumors or isolated facts. An ounce of knowledge will be found to be worth a pound of opinion.

Employment is one of the best methods of disciplining a school. That teacher who can keep the minds of children constantly employed, will succeed as a disciplinarian with but little physical coërcion. There never was a truer maxim for the school-room than this, “ An idle brain is the devil's workshop.”

Let me urge upon teachers, if they would succeed as disciplinarians, a few ideas. No two schools can be governed in exactly the same manner; no two scholars exactly alike. To succeed, you must study the characteristics of the locality in which you labor; study the individual characters of your pupils, their home and out-door habits, their mental and moral peculiarities, in short, their idiosyncrasies of every name and nature. Avoid fixed arbitrary rules.

Even at the risk of being unjustly called partial, you must not treat all pupils alike, even for the same offence. Some are not benefited by physical punishment; others are. Children should be governed according to their nature and temperament. Some can be subdued one way, some another. This matter of school discipline requires not only innate power and inborn adaptedness for the work, but patient and persevering study.

Time will not permit me to discuss the remedies for physical coërcion. I will simply mention three of the most prominent.

1st. Judicious home government.

2d. Expulsion of refractory pupils.

3d. The establishment of Botany-Bay schools for the insubordinates.

Some year and a half ago, at the dedication of the Prescott School-house, a thought occurred to me, as the keys of that beautiful structure were presented to the master · — a thought to which I will now, for the first time, give utterance. It will form, I think, a fitting close to the theme we have been considering. As I witnessed the ceremony of presentation, my mind ran forward to the time when thousands of youthful immortals would throng the spacious hall and commodious rooms of this magnificent edifice; and I said to myself, How little can city officials and school-committees really do! They present us