Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: on. Porridge has a very plain taste, but for everyday fare even children prefer it to tarts for breakfast. A London confectioner was asked, if he did not find the many boys he employed make depredations. " No," he said, "when first they come I tell them they may eat what they like ; in a few days they make themselves sick and eat no more." There was a book called the Decoy, a story mixed with conversations on grammar ; children always managed to get the story without the grammar. They like sums and history for regular meals, fairy tales for dessert. (6) Teaching must be adapted to the mental state of the pupil, and be just a HttL above his unassisted intelligence. It is a worse fault to teach below than above the powers of the child. I shall never forget my indignation at having a book given me, which was below my powers, nor the stimulus of trying to do what was hard. One who was afterwards a distinguished teacher, told me how the Maurice lectures helped him, by making him feel there were regions of thought on which he had not yet entered. Knowledge quite within reach does not promote progress. A friend who had a night school was told by its members, " We want to be taught something as we can't understand ". They meant something they could not learn without help ; they wanted to overcome difficulties. (7) Form right habits. We should as far as possible prevent the making of mistakes even once. A child when reading the Bible miscalled the word patriarch, reading it partridge ; when an old man, he never saw the word without recalling his error. Hence we should not give children misspelt words, or bad grammar to correct, or let them write exercises before the ear has been cultivated to know what is right. I knew a music master who would anticipate mistakes, and stop the pupil,...