own characters, as to encourage them to develop on their own lines.
To do this completely needs wisdom, tact, and justice; but nothing
can excuse us from attempting it.

The reason why life is so often made into a dull and dreary
business for ourselves and others, is that we accept some
conventional standard of duty and rectitude, and heavily enforce
it; we neglect the interest, the zest, the beauty of life. In my
own career as an educator, I can truthfully say that when I arrived
at some of the perceptions enunciated above, it made an immense
difference to me. I saw that it was a mistake to coerce, to
correct, to enforce; of course such things have to be done
occasionally with wilful and perverse natures; but I realized,
after I had gained some practice in dealing with boys, that
generous and simple praise, outspoken encouragement, admiration,
directness, could win victories that no amount of strictness or
repression could win. I began to see that enthusiasm and interest
were the contagious things, and that it was possible to sympathize
genuinely with tastes which one did not share. Of course there were
plenty of failures on my own part, failures of irritability,
stupidity, and indolence; but I soon realized that these were
failures; and, after all, in education it matters more which way
one's face is set than how fast one proceeds!

I seem, perhaps, to have strayed into the educational point of
view; but it is only an instance of how the artistic method may be
applied in a region which is believed by many to be remote from the
region of art. The principle, after all, is a very clear one; it is
that life can be made with a little effort into a beautiful thing;
that the real ugliness of life consists not in its conditions, not