14 TUTOR SPONHOLZ. 



to obtain a power mysterious! to me to this day. He 

 never punished us. hardly ever uttered a word of 

 blame, shared however frequently in our games, and 

 had the knack even through the medium of play of 

 evoking our good qualities and repressing our bad 

 ones. His teaching was in the highest degree stimu- 

 lating and ericoiira<rino\ He understood how to set 



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up really attainable goals for our labours, and streng- 

 thened our energies and our ambition by his delight 

 at the attainment of the proposed goal, which he himself 

 frankly shared with us. Thus he succeeded in very 

 few weeks in making out of unruly lazy boys the most 

 eager and industrious scholars, whom he had not to 

 urge to work, but rather to keep from attempting 

 too much. 



In me especially he awakened the inextinguishable 

 feeling of delight in useful work and the ambitious 



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desire actually to perform it. An important expedient 

 employed by him for this purpose was his stories. 

 If late in the evening our eyes began to close over 

 our work, he would beckon us to him on the leather 

 sofa w r here he used to sit beside our work-table, and 

 whilst we clung to him paint us pictures of our own 

 future. These either represented as at the heights of 

 civil life, that we had scaled through industry and 

 moral fitness, and which enabled us to lessen the cares 

 of our parents very considerable in that time of 

 great difficulty for the agriculturist - - or depicted our 

 wretched fate, if we relaxed in our efforts, and were 

 unable to resist temptation to evil. 



