men of _your_ country? What type of achievement have you been led to
imitate and emulate and admire?" How many of our boys and girls have
even heard of our great men in the world of culture,--unless, indeed,
such men lived a half century ago and have got into the school readers
by this time? How many of our boys and girls have ever heard of
MacDowell, or James, or Whistler, or Sargent?

I have said that the teacher must take the vow of service. What does
this imply except that the opportunity for service, the privilege of
serving, should be the opportunity that one seeks, and that the
achievements toward which one aspires should be the achievements of
serving? The keynote of service lies in self-sacrifice,--in
self-forgetfulness, rather,--in merging one's own life in the lives of
others. The attitude of the true teacher in this respect is very similar
to the attitude of the true parent. In so far as the parent feels
himself responsible for the character of his children, in so far as he
holds himself culpable for their shortcomings and instrumental in
shaping their virtues, he loses himself in his children. What we term
parental affection is, I believe, in part an outgrowth of this feeling
of responsibility. The situation is precisely the same with the
teacher. It is when the teacher begins to feel himself responsible for
the growth and development of his pupils that he begins to find himself
in the work of teaching. It is then that the effective devotion to his
pupils has its birth. The affection that comes prior to this is, I
think, very likely to be of the sentimental and transitory sort.

In education, as in life, we play altogether too carelessly with the
word "love." The test of true devotion is self-forgetfulness. Until the
teacher reaches that point, he is conscious of two distinct elements in
his work,--himself and his pupils. When that time comes, his own _ego_