Make as
good a school, and accomplish as much for it as you can in six hours,
and let the rest go. When you come from your school-room at night, leave
all your perplexities and cares behind you. No matter what unfinished
business or unsettled difficulties remain, dismiss them till another sun
shall rise, and the hour of duty for another day shall come. Carry no
school-work home with you, and do not even talk of your school-work at
home. You will then get refreshment and rest. Your mind, during the
evening, will be in a different world from that in which you have moved
during the day. At first this will be difficult. It will be hard for
you, unless your mind is uncommonly well disciplined, to dismiss all
your cares; and you will think, each evening, that some peculiar
emergency demands your attention _just at that time,_ and that as soon
as you have passed the crisis you will confine yourself to what you
admit are generally reasonable limits; but if you once allow school,
with its perplexities and cares, to get possession of the rest of the
day, it will keep possession. It will intrude itself into all your
waking thoughts, and trouble you in your dreams. You will lose all
command of your powers, and, besides cutting off from yourself all hope
of general intellectual progress, you will, in fact, destroy your
success as a teacher. Exhaustion, weariness, and anxiety will be your
continual portion, and in such a state no business can be successfully
prosecuted.
Pages:
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367