But in spite of this well planned campaign the smoking in the seventh grade continued. Some of the boys, with the low ideals of honor which characterize youthful cigarette users, had had no intentions of stopping; others were sincere in their intentions, but yielded to example or habit when the effects of Miss Steele’s warning grew cold. As the stories of the failure of her efforts came to the teacher, she became more than ever convinced that the use of cigarettes causes unspeakable moral degradation. It did not occur to her that her method of attacking the evil could have been a mistaken one. CONSTRUCTIVE TREATMENT To combat successfully the smoking habit in the seventh and eighth grade boys, it is necessary to substitute for the sensory pleasure of smoking an equally intense or more intense stimulation of another sort. Show the pupils that indulgence in habits of this sort will certainly rob them of keener delights of a more innocent type. See to it that the innocent pleasures are _within reach_—not far distant and hazy in outline. COMMENTS Miss Steele failed by placing before her class a motive so remote in time that it could not be very intense as a stimulus to self-denial. Thirteen-year-old boys have not done a vast amount of thinking about the possibilities of the distant future. For them the present and the immediate future are the all-absorbing topics. How could the three desirable conditions—nearness in time, innocent enjoyment, and intensity of stimulation—be combined so as to supplant the undesirable conditions which had led to the smoking habit? This was the problem over which Miss Hardy was pondering. ILLUSTRATION (EIGHTH GRADE) [Sidenote: Athletics versus Smoking] Meantime Miss Hardy had been studying her psychology, and between times had been talking athletics with her old pupils who had passed on into the high school. The high school teams were well coached and in football had made a good record that gave promise of being equaled in basket ball. The best man on the teams was Raymond Johnston, who was one of those marvels of all-around excellence who happen once in a while to rejoice the hearts of teachers. He was a big, handsome boy, with a bluff charm of manner which won all hearts, and ready friendliness which made him the idol of the school. He was a star student, who had made a good record in debating as well as in athletics. Raymond Johnston belonged, moreover, to a prominent family in the nearby city, a family in which high ideals of manners and morals were so intrinsic a part of living that the children grew up healthy, unconscious exponents of all that is best in character and living. It was this fine, talented boy whom Miss Hardy chose to do for her boys what she knew, able as she was, she could not herself do effectively.