“I shall not tell him, this time. But if it happens again, I think he should know about it,” I said. “Herbert, you know you can do what you please with these grade boys here in this school. They look up to you and follow your leadership. You can make them do what is right or you can lead them astray.” He shook his head violently at this, but was too near to tears to speak. “We may think we aren’t our brothers’ keepers, Herbert, but we are, just as the Bible tells us. It is really you who are responsible for this affair, because you are older and know better than the others the evils that come from the use of tobacco.” And I talked to him a little about the effects of tobacco upon growing boys. I thought he seemed impressed and penitent. “I’m going to put you in charge of the whole matter. I want you to see to it that there is no more smoking after this. You can report to me once a week what sort of success you have, but we won’t say anything to the others about the arrangement.” He protested that he couldn’t do it, but finally blurted out “I’ll try,” and I shook hands with him on the agreement. The reports proved the success of my scheme and I found I had made a warm friend and ally of Herbert. (8) _Manners, good and bad._ Nowhere, perhaps, is the influence of the imitative instinct more potent than in the shaping of one’s manners. “_Manners make the man_,” is a legend inscribed over the door of one of the buildings of Oxford University, and in order that the pupils shall go out from its doors possessed of the high claims to the respect of their fellow men which good manners affords, exquisite care is taken that those adults who are daily associated with the pupils are themselves possessed of such manners as are worthy of imitation. All unconsciously to themselves, these manners will soon be reproduced in the pupils with more or less exactness. But if good manners are assimilated through association with those who possess them, bad manners are no less surely learned in the same way. The teacher who is confronted then with a room full of rude, noisy, untidy children, should never regard these bad manners as a personal affront to himself, but rather as a result of social “copy” unconsciously imitated by his pupils and requiring time and patience and a substitution of “copy” of the opposite sort before such manners can be eradicated. [Sidenote: Social Imitation]