Sect. 2. The most desirable method of procuring ushers is by advertisements. None will apply who are not in desperate circumstances, and these are your men. If they know little it is no great matter; they will be the more diligent: and should the children detect their ignorance, or the parents complain, you may easily dismiss them; others such-like are to be had; and it will shew your friends how desirous you are to oblige them.
Sect. 3. When your ushers first come, you must endeavour to open their hearts by kind treatment. Make yourself acquainted with their circumstances; you may then more judiciously reduce them to trammels.
Sect. 4. It is not your interest that the ushers be too intimate one with another, or with the boys; they may communicate their respective observations; poison the minds of your boys with injurious reflections on your character; or revolt, and make a confusion in your school.
Sect. 5. If a search is to be made after some hoards of forbidden dainties, the information must always be declared to come from an usher; it will preserve the odium from you: but the seizure must be made by you or your wife; it will afford you an agreeable repast.
Sect. 6. If a boy be sent home, whose parents are in low circumstances, the usher is the man to accompany him: he is the properest person to inform the parents what progress the boy makes: and to send your footman would be making no distinction betwixt the children of the poor and the rich.
Sect. 7. If a beggar appears at the door, your usher is the man to send him away, both because he may be mistaken for the master of the house, and because he ought, whilst the boys are at play, to be always at the door.
Sect. 8. If you see an usher writing a letter, or reading in school-time, send him a boy to teach; it will shew your regard to the welfare of your boys.
Sect. 9. Never let your ushers have money before-hand; they may abscond: and you may as well seek a criminal in a coal-mine, as an usher in an academy.
Sect. 10. Never introduce an usher into company; it will lessen your authority, and he will undermine your credit.
Sect. 11. Let them always breakfast with the servants, or in some other equally humble manner; it will keep them at a due distance from you, and make them the more thankful for what little notice you may think proper to take of them.