privacy of home, which many seem to think a suitable place for acting as they would be ashamed or afraid to act in public, where they would meet with somewhat more formidable checks than helpless wives and children; how many such fathers can any recollect, whose sons did not resemble and probably surpass them in all their worst habits? Equally sure, too, will the daughters be to follow their mamma's goodly examples, should _they also_ habitually display any of those faults or vices that are calculated to sully the purity of the female character, or in any way to degrade and render it odious. With such facts continually before the eyes of all parents, what supreme folly and madness—nay, what deadly guilt must be theirs, who do not avoid setting bad examples to their children, as they would shun the utmost extremity of misery! Among those parental faults which soonest begin to work incalculable mischief, is the habitual practice of talking and acting in such a manner, in regard to the whole class of teachers, that by the time their children are sent to school they learn to look upon the entire tribe of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses as belonging to a class much inferior to that of their parents, and to consider their being placed under such supervision as a kind of purgatorial punishment. I once knew a gentleman in whose mind these early notions had taken deep root, who used to say, that he could never pass through a pine-wood resembling that in which his first schoolhouse stood, without being thrown into a cold perspiration by it. Without doubt he had been exposed to the parental practice I am now condemning, the almost inevitable consequence of which is, to create contempt and aversion for teachers, reluctant obedience, distrust in their capacities to teach, and not unfrequently open insubordination. Manners and polite deportment are deemed quite hidden mysteries to these teachers, or matters with which the parents never designed they should meddle—it being frequently intimated that they never had opportunities for acquiring the first, nor feel any interest in teaching the last, farther than to protect themselves from injury and insult. Awkwardness, if not rudeness also, is often deemed an almost inseparable part of their character; and their pupils are not unfrequently encouraged by parental smiles to laugh at and ridicule “the poor schoolmaster or mistress,” instead of being checked by timely reproof in all such conduct. If there happen to be the faint semblance of a little wit or humor in these remarks, many silly parents take the first opportunity of retailing them with evident pleasure, even in the child's presence; and the silly delight manifested at this supposed proof of marvellous precocity, completely overcomes all sense of the culpability of the act, or of its very pernicious influence on the dispositions of the child. At most it is