This work will often require great adroitness and very close scrutiny, and you will find, as the results of it, a considerable variety of character, which the general influences above described will not be sufficient to control.

The number of individuals will not be great, but the diversity of character comprised in it will be such as to call into exercise all your powers of vigilance and discrimination.

On one seat you will find a coarse, rough-looking boy, who openly disobeys your commands and opposes your wishes while in school, and makes himself a continual source of trouble and annoyance during play-hours by bullying and hectoring every gentle and timid schoolmate.

On another sits a more sly rogue, whose demure and submissive look is assumed to conceal a mischief-making disposition.
Here is one whose giddy spirit is always leading him into difficulty, but who is of so open and frank a disposition that you will most easily lead him back to duty; but there is another who, when reproved, will fly into a passion; and then a third, who will stand sullen and silent before you when he has done wrong, and is not to be touched by kindness nor awed by authority.
[Illustration] Now all these characters must be studied.

It is true that the caution given in a preceding part of this chapter, against devoting undue and disproportionate attention to such persons, must not be forgotten.
Still, these individuals will require, and it is right that they should receive, a far greater degree of attention, so far as the moral administration of the school is concerned, than their mere numbers would appear to justify.