Another rule is to use your eyes quite as much as your tongue. If you want your class to look at you, you must look at them. The eye has a magic power. It wins, it fascinates, it guides, it rewards, it punishes, it controls. You must learn how to see every child all the time. Some teachers seem to be able to see only one scholar at a time. This will never do. While you are giving this absorbed, undivided attention to one, all the rest are running wild. Neither will it do for the teacher to be looking about much, to see what is going on among the other classes in the room. Your scholars' eyes will be very apt to follow yours. You are the engineer, they are the passengers. If you run off the track, they must do likewise. Nor must your eye be occupied with the book, hunting up question and answer, nor dropped to the floor in excessive modesty. All the power of seeing that you have is needed for looking earnestly, lovingly, without interruption, into the faces and eyes of your pupils. But for the observance of this rule, another is indispensable. You must learn to teach without book. Perhaps you cannot do this absolutely. But the nearer you can approach to it, the better. Thorough preparation, of course, is the secret of this power. Some teachers think they have prepared a lesson when they have gone over it once, and studied out all the answers. There could not be a greater mistake. This is only the first step in the preparation. You might as well think that you have learned the Multiplication Table, and are prepared to teach it, when you have gone over it once and seen by actual count that the figures are all right, and you know where to put your finger on them when required. You are prepared to teach a lesson when you have all the facts and ideas in it at your tongue's end, so that you can go through them all, in proper order, without once referring to the book. Any preparation short of this will not do, if you want to command attention. Once prepare a lesson in this way, and it will give you such freedom in the art of teaching, and you will experience such a pleasure in it, that you will never want to relapse into the old indolent habit. XXVIII. COUNSELS. * * * * * 1. _To a Young Teacher._ You are about to assume the charge of a class in the school under my care. Allow me, in a spirit of frankness, to make to you a brief statement of some of the aims of the institution, and of the principles by which we are guided in their prosecution.