If you correct little boys' copies yourself, you will find that you have undertaken a long and wearisome task that brings no result. When you return these copies, they are received with thanks, folded up, carefully pocketed, and never looked at again. Make the boys reserve a good wide margin for the corrections. Underline all their mistakes, and, under your eyes, make them correct the mistakes themselves.
However well up you may be in your subjects, you are sure to find yourself occasionally tripping. The derivation of a certain word will escape you for a moment, or the right translation of another will not come to your mind quickly enough. With grown-up and intelligent young fellows in advanced classes, no need to apologise. But with little boys you must remember that you are an oracle. Never for a moment let them doubt your infallibility; call up all the resources of your ingenuity, and find a way out of the difficulty. So a good actor, whose memory fails him for the time, calls upon his imagination to supply its place. And must not any man, who would gain and keep the ear of a mixed audience, be a bit of an actor, let his theatre be the hustings, the church, or the class-room? Has not a master to appear perfectly cross when he is perfectly cool, or perfectly cool when he is perfectly cross? Is not this acting?
It once fell to my unhappy lot to be requested to take an arithmetic class twice a week, during the temporary absence of a mathematical master. In my youth I was a little of a mathematician, but figures I was always bad at. As for English sums, with their bewildering complications of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings, which that practical people still fondly cling to, it has always been a subject of wonder to me how the English themselves do them. How I piloted those dear boys through Bills of Parcels I don't know; but it is a fact that we got on pretty well till we reached "Stocks." Here my path grew very thorny.
One morning the boys all came with the same sad story. None had been able to do one of the sums I had given them from the book. They had all tried; their brothers had tried; their fathers had tried; not one could do it.
A short look at it convinced me that I should have no more chance of success than all those Britons, young and old, but it would never do to let my pupils know this. They must suppose that those few moments had been sufficient for me to master the sum in. So, assuming my most solemn voice, I said:
"Why, boys, do you mean to tell me you can not do such a simple sum as this?"
"No, we can't, sir," was the general cry.
"Why, Robinson, not even you?" I said to the top boy. "I always considered you a sharp lad. Jones, you cannot? Nor Brown? Well, well; it's too bad."