With the spirit of this I agree entirely. The letter does not seem to me entirely satisfactory. I have learned to be a little afraid of ridicule as a means of affecting the minds of the young in any direction. It is the easiest of methods, but no less is it the one which requires the most prudence and delicacy. It is the one which is most surely open to the error of the point of view. If the teacher tries to lessen the inclination of pupils for specific books by ridicule, he can do no good unless he is able to make the class feel that these books are ridiculous not only according to the standards of the teacher but according to the standard of the child. To prove that from the instructor's point of view a book is poor and silly amounts to little if the work really appeals to the young. No more is effected than would be accomplished if the teacher told lusty lads that to him playing ball seemed a foolish form of amusement. They appreciate at once that he is speaking from a point of view which is not theirs and which they have no wish to share. He must be able to make it evident that the book in question, with its attractions, which he must frankly acknowledge, is poor when judged by standards which the pupils feel to be true and which belong to the sphere of boyhood. I confess with contrition that in my zeal for good literature I have in earlier days spoken contemptuously of popular and trashy books which I had reason to think my boys probably enjoyed and admired. I believe I was wrong. Now I do not hesitate to say what I think about any book when a student asks me, but I make it a rule never in class to attack specific books or authors for anything but viciousness, and that question is hardly likely to arise in the secondary schools. I cannot afford to run the risk of alienating the sympathies of my pupils, and of arousing a feeling that my point of view is so far removed from theirs that they cannot trust my opinions to be sympathetic. The normal attitude of the child toward the adult is likely enough to be that of believing "grown-ups" to be so far from understanding what children really care for as to be entirely untrustworthy in the selection of reading. The child disregards or distrusts the judgments of his elders not on abstract grounds, but merely from an instinctive feeling that adults do not look at things from his point of view. I always fear lest by an unwise condemnation of a book which a lad has enjoyed I may be strengthening this perfectly natural and inevitably stubborn conviction.