I should endeavor to make it appear that clean and accurate speech is a part of good manners, an important item in the general equipment for life. When it came to writing, I should begin with the familiar letter, leaving the choice of subject to the student. These compositions, read in the class, would be criticised, as far as possible, by the students themselves. I should efface myself completely as an instructor and establish the relation of a fellow-seeker intent upon finding the best way of saying a thing. If there were usages that appeared to be common to a neighborhood, or intrusions of dialect peculiar to a State or a section, I might search out and describe their origin, but if they were flavorsome and truly of the soil I should not discourage their use. Self-consciousness in these early years is to be avoided. The weaknesses of the individual student are only discernible where he is permitted to speak and write without timidity. When a youngster is made to understand from a concrete example that a sentence is badly constructed, or that it is marred by a weak word or a word used out of its true sense, the rules governing such instances may be brought to his attention with every confidence that he will understand their point. My work would be merely a preparation for the teaching of grammar, if grammar there must be; but I should resent such instruction if my successor failed to relate my work to his. I consider the memorizing of short passages of verse and prose an important adjunct to the teaching of English by any method. “Learn it by heart” seems to have gone out of fashion in late years. I have recently sat in classes and listened to the listless reading, paragraph by paragraph, of time-honored classics, knowing well that the students were getting nothing out of them. The more good English the student carries in his head the likelier he is to gain a respect for his language and a confidence and effectiveness in speaking and writing it. Let the example precede the rule! If there is any sense in the rule the example will clarify it; if it is without justification and designed merely to befuddle the student, then it ought to be abolished anyhow. The idea that children should be seen and not heard belongs to the period when it was believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. Children should be encouraged to talk, to observe and to describe the things that interest them in the course of the day. In this way they will form the habit of the intelligent reporter who, on the way to his desk from an assignment, plans his article, eager to find the best way of telling his story. Instead of making a hateful mystery of English speech it should be made the most natural thing in the world, worthy of the effort necessary to give it accuracy, ease, and charm.