How To Do It by Edward Everett Hale

I do not mean life at a boarding-school. If I speak of that, it is to be at another time. No, I mean life at a regular every-day school, in town or in the country, where you go in the morning and come away at eleven or at noon, and go again in the afternoon, and come away after two or three hours. Some young people hate this life, and some like it tolerably well. I propose to give some information which shall make it more agreeable all round.

And I beg it may be understood that I do not appear as counsel for either party, in the instruction and advice I give. That means that, as the lawyers say, I am not retained by the teachers, formerly called schoolmistresses and schoolmasters, or by the pupils, formerly called boys and girls. I have been a schoolmaster myself, and I enjoyed the life very much, and made among my boys some of the best of the friends of my life. I have also been a school-boy, -- and I roughed through my school life with comparative comfort and ease. As master and as boy I learned some things which I think can be explained to boys and girls now, so as to make life at school easier and really more agreeable.