Entered, according to Act of Congress,
in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, by
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court
of the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
This book is intended to detail, in a familiar and practical manner, asystem of arrangements for the organization and management of a school,based on the employment, so far as is practicable, of MoralInfluences, as a means of effecting the objects in view. Its design is,not to bring forward new theories or new plans, but to develop andexplain, and to carry out to their practical applications suchprinciples as, among all skillful and experienced teachers, aregenerally admitted and acted upon. Of course it is not designed for theskillful and experienced themselves, but it is intended to embody whatthey already know, and to present it in a practical form for the use ofthose who are beginning the work, and who wish to avail themselves ofthe experience which others have acquired.
Although moral influences are the chief foundations on which the powerof the teacher over the minds and hearts of his pupils is, according tothis treatise, to rest, still it must not be imagined that the systemhere recommended is one of persuasion. It is a system ofauthority—supreme and unlimited authority—a point essential in allplans for the supervision of the young; but it is authority secured andmaintained as far as possible by moral measures. There will be nodispute about the propriety of making the most of this class of means.Whatever difference of opinion there may be on the question whetherphysical force is necessary at all, every one will agree that, if everemployed, it must be only as a last resort, and that no teacher ought tomake war upon the body, unless it is proved that he can not conquerthrough the medium of the mind.
In regard to the anecdotes and narratives which are very freelyintroduced to illustrate principles in this work, the writer ought tostate that, though they are all substantially true—that is, all exceptthose which are expressly introduced as mere suppositions, he has nothesitated to alter very freely, for obvious reasons, the unimportantcircumstances connected with them. He has endeavored thus to destroy thepersonality of the narratives without injuring or altering their moraleffect.
From the very nature of our employment, and of the circumstances underwhich the preparation for it must be made, it is plain that, of the manythousands who are in the United States annually entering the work, avery large majority must depend for all their knowledge of the art,except what they acquire from their own observation and experience, onwhat they can obtain from books. It is desirable that the class of worksfrom which such knowledge can be obtained should be increased. Someexcellent and highly useful specimens have already appeared, and verymany more would be eagerly read by teachers, if properly prepared. It isessential, however, that they should be written by experiencedteachers, who have for some years been actively engaged and speciallyinterested in the work; that they should be written in a very practicaland familiar style, and that they should exhibit principles which areunquestionably true, and generally admitted by good teachers, and notthe new theories peculiar to the writer himself. In a word, utility andpractical effect should be