Make a note of the difficulties you encounter, and the points in which you cannot accomplish what you desire. Very likely you will find these very difficulties discussed in the books on teaching which you are reading. If not, lay your difficulties before some friend who is a successful teacher, and get advice. _Anything_, rather than going on, week after week, without improvement. There _is_ a way of interesting your class in their lessons, of securing good order and punctual attendance, of making the scholars learn. Only make up your mind that you will find out what that way is. If you think it cannot be done, of course it will not be done. If you have fairly made up your mind that it _may_ be done, and that _you_ can do it, it is half done already. You have no idea how much more pleasant the work will be, when you have once learned how to do it. One reason why so many teachers desert the ranks, is the irksomeness produced by want of success. Few things are more intolerable than being obliged to do a thing while conscious of doing it in an awkward and bungling manner. On the other hand, almost any work is a pleasure, which one is conscious of doing well. XVI. TEACHING POWER. Teachers differ greatly in their ability to bring a class forward in intellectual acquisition and growth. With one teacher pupils are all life and energy, they take hold of difficulties with courage, their ideas become clear, their very power of comprehension seems to gather strength. With another teacher, those same pupils, studying the same subject, are dull, heavy, easily discouraged, and make almost no progress. The ability thus to stimulate the intellectual activity of others, to give it at once momentum and progress, is the true measure of one's teaching power. It may be well to consider for a moment some of the conditions necessary to the existence and the exercise of this power.