This, then, I cultivated to the best of my power, following
the path whither my vocation and my life now called me.
To say truth, I had a silent inward reluctance towards private
tutorship. I felt the constant interruptions and the piece-meal nature
of the work inseparable from the conditions of the case, and hence I
suspected that it might want vitality; but the trusting indulgence with
which I was met, and especially the clear, bright, friendly glance which
greeted me from the two younger lads, decided me to undertake to give
the boys lessons for two hours a day, and to share their walks. The
actual teaching was to be in arithmetic and German. The first was soon
arranged. I simply followed Pestalozzi's course. But as to the language
I encountered great difficulties. I began by teaching it from the
regular school-books then used, and indeed still in use. I prepared
myself to the best of my ability for each lesson, and worked up whatever
I felt myself ignorant of in the most careful and diligent way. But the
mode of teaching employed in these books frustrated my efforts. I could
neither get on myself nor get my pupils on with it. So I began to take
for my method Pestalozzi's "Mothers' Book.
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