A selection from these “Notes” is being prepared for the use of teachers by Miss Toplis, and will shortly be published by Messrs. Macmillan and Co. It is easy, after going through these notes, to be sure of the secret of her great influence. It is teaching that goes straight to the point because it comes straight from the heart of the teacher, whose happy pupils had good reason to say, “What before may have been only words to us then became facts. She was not so much a teacher as an inspiration!” How these earlier ideals stood the test of time we may read in a record given a quarter of a century later by the colleague who best knew her work of “Education as known in the North London Collegiate School for Girls.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: NORTH LONDON COLLEGIATE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IX. PRACTICAL WORK. “No one who has been brought into contact with Miss Buss, no one who has even seen her portrait, can have failed to be struck by her transparent integrity, her absolute sincerity, her single-mindedness of purpose. However much one might differ from her on a question of policy, one felt certain that the judgment was never warped by personal bias, that it was never prompted by ambition or jealousy, or any vulgar motive.... As an organizer she was unrivalled.”—_Journal of Education_, January, 1895. The summary of Miss Buss’ practical work, for which I am so deeply indebted to Mrs. Bryant, is best given in her own words, with merely an interpolation illustrating that law of order on which these schools are so firmly based. * * * * * Mrs. Bryant begins with an important reminder— “Teachers are not inapt to forget that the most important factor in education is the personality of the learner. The next most important is the personality of the teacher. So far as others make our education for us, the mind of the educator is more important by far than his method. And this is the more true the greater the teacher. “Of Frances Mary Buss this was specially true, so much was intuition and sympathy in the concrete inwoven with her thoughts on the educational ideal. The ideal of her action was an emanation of her nature as a whole, not a pure product of thought. She could have told many things about it, but she could not tell it all. Her vision was wide, but her wisdom was wider. Hence there never was any danger that her mind would harden into a net of secondary principles in the solution of any individual problem. Practical questions were always unique, each one in itself, to her; and, rapid as she was in action, she could give time to deliberation and careful thought.