xxii NATURE-STUDY. 



nettle. Perhaps you think that I now fail to recognize 

 a nettle across the road, with all its relatives, stinging 

 and harmless? If you do you are wrong. I stop and 

 look at them always, and we bow cordially as I pass by, 

 and one of the most treasured preparations in my micro- 

 scopical cabinet, is a slide of the stinging hairs of the net- 

 tle. I do not much care how you arouse the child's in- 

 terest in botany ; sting him with a nettle if you will, but 

 I do want his botanical interest aroused. If you know 

 anything about hornets, you can talk simply about them, 

 and then take your pupils on a hunt for a hornet's nest, 

 and while you stand at a safe distance, you can expatiate 

 on formic acid, if you will, but you will have it in your 

 power to kindle an undying incitement to pleasant thought 

 and reading. 



Regard for the Individual. 



One great mistake often made in all congregations of 

 old or young, is to overlook the value of the individual. 

 The school expects all to come to its gradation; deals 

 in classes and grades. But not so our great teachers. 

 Socrates taught not in classes, but drew out from the 

 individual. This process did not promote large classes 

 but it made a Plato, and through him by the same method 

 an Aristotle. 



This is ever the method of the true educator. The 

 Great Teacher who drew his inspiration and examples 

 from the wilderness, the mountain peaks, the rivers, the 

 fields, the birds, said not, "We will get a great body of 

 people together and conquer the world spiritually by the 

 wholesale." No, He dealt, with the individual, — a very 

 few of them principally. He laid more stress on private 

 prayer than on public worship. 



