Dr. McGuffey's classes in the University of Virginia were well attended.
His lectures were delivered extempore, in language exactly expressing
his thoughts. His illustrations were most apt. He taught "with the
simplicity of a child, with the precision of a mathematician, and with
the authority of truth."

[Method of Teaching]

A portion of the lecture hour was given to questioning the members of
the class. In this he used the Socratic method, leading the pupil by a
series of questions to the discovery of the incorrectness of his
reasoning or the falsity of his grounds. By this process the students
were led to question their own reasoning, to think clearly and to
express their thoughts accurately.

Dr. McGuffey once told a pupil that he had preached three thousand
sermons and had never written one. Until late in life he had never
written his lectures. Shortly before his death he began the preparation
of a book on Mental Philosophy. This was never completed.

Dr. McGuffey was twice married. By his first wife. Miss Harriet Spinning
of Dayton, he had several children. One daughter, Mary, married Dr.
William W. Stewart of Dayton; another, Henrietta, married Professor A.
D. Hepburn who was for a time president of Miami University. Professor
Hepburn's son, in turn inheriting his grandfather's faculty of teaching,
is a professor in the University of Indiana.

[Interest in Public Schools]