Service by the Educated Negro

Teaching is an art inseparable from the personality of the teacher,—an art in which a mature person seeks by personal influence to help immature persons build their characters soundly. Teaching ability, to adapt the words of Cardinal Newman, “is not a mere extrinsic or accidental advantage which is ours to-day and another’s to-morrow, which may be got up from a book and easily forgotten again, which we can command or communicate at our pleasure, which we can borrow for the occasion, carry about in our hands and take into the market; it is an acquired illumination, it is a habit, a personal possession and an inward endowment.” The best way to become a good teacher is, therefore, to become a good man or a good woman, and to grow in power to interest and influence young people.