To "improve the occasion" really destroys the opportunity; it is like a too expansive invitation to birds to come and feed, which drives them off in a nutter.

Birds come most willingly when crumbs are thrown as it were by accident while the benefactor looks another way; and young minds pick up gratefully a suggestion which seems to fall by the way, a mere hint that things are understood and cared about, that there is safety beyond the thin ice if one trusts and believes, that "all shall be well" if people will be true to their best thoughts.

They can understand these assurances and accept them when something more explicit would drive them back to bar the door against intruders.

All these are truisms to those who have observed children.

The misfortune is that in spite of the prominence given to training of teachers, of the new name of "Child Study" and its manuals, there are many who teach children without reaching their real selves.