The Sabbath School. ## THE ART OF SECURING ATTENTION.
By S. S. Hand-Book
You will not get attention by demanding it as a right, or by entreating it as a favor; by urging upon your pupils the importance of the subject, the sacredness of the day, the kindness of their teachers, or the great and solemn character of the truths you have to impart. Attention, such as alone can serve the purpose of a Sabbath-school teacher, must always be founded on the facts that you have got something to say which is worth a child's hearing, and that you can say it in such a manner that he shall feel it to be worth his hearing. The teacher's own mind must be accurately and abundantly prepared on the subject which he has to teach. He must have details—facts which he knows how to state with exactness; and a degree of nicety and precision about his knowledge far greater than he can ever hope to impart to the children. He should store his mind beforehand, not merely with what he means to impart, but with a great deal more. He does not know what topic may grow out of the lesson; he cannot tell what questions the children may ask, nor what illustrations he may find most effective. So he should provide himself at all points. He should look at the lesson and into the lesson, and all round the lesson, before he gives it. There is another reason for attaching great importance to abundant preparation. No man can ever teach all he knows on any subject. If you would be a good teacher, therefore, up to a certain point, you yourself should have gone far beyond that point. If any teacher just gets up a lesson from printed notes, and is only barely provided with the knowledge actually required for his class, he is sure to fail, both in securing attention and in getting the subject understood. Children will always carry away with them far less than you bring. Make up your mind at once to the fact, that a large discount or percentage of even a successful lesson is always lost in the very act of communicating it. Get all the subsidiary and illustrative information you can possibly accumulate about your lesson before you give it. Anecdotes, definitions of hard words, illustrations of Eastern life, verses of poetry, parallel texts and allusions, may or may not all be needed in the lesson; but at any rate, they certainly will be needed by yourself. Book knowledge is not the only knowledge, and it is certainly not all a Sabbath-school teacher wants. His preparation must be going on in the world as well as in his study. He must watch the incidents of every day, and see what use he can make of them in his class. The history of each day's experience, even of the humblest of us, illustrates some great moral and spiritual truth which underlies it, and is meant to be recognized and understood by us. If there is anything unfamiliar, or artificial, or sermonizing in your language or even in your tone; if your illustrations are bookish and unpractical; if the virtues and the vices you talk about are not the actual virtues which it is possible for them to practice, and the actual vices into which they are likely to fall; if in any way you shoot above their heads, or betray a want of familiarity with the real lives which children lead, your class, as an inevitable result, will cease to feel any interest in what you say. One of the greatest safeguards for the attention of the class is the cultivation on the teacher's part of quickness of eye and ear. It is surprising sometimes to see teachers addressing themselves to one part of their class, and apparently unconscious that another part is listless and uninterested. They seem incapable of taking in the whole class at one glance. Their eyes move slowly, and they either do not see the disorder and trifling which lurks in the corner of their class, or they do not care to notice what it would give them some little trouble to remedy. A person of this kind will never keep up attention, nor prove a successful teacher, however well he may be provided with knowledge, and however anxious he may be to do good. What every good teacher greatly needs is a quick eye and a comprehensive glance, which will take in the whole class at one view, or travel instantly from one part of it to the other. He should be able to detect the first symptom of weariness, in an instant, and to apply a remedy to it the next instant. It is from want of promptitude in noticing the little beginnings of inattention that our classes so often get disorderly and tired. We recommend every one who wants to be a good teacher, therefore, to cultivate in himself the habit of sharpness and watchfulness. He should so train himself that he shall become peculiarly sensitive about the little signs of inattention. It ought to make him uncomfortable to see one child's eye averted, or one proof, however small, that the thoughts of the class are straying from the subject. The surest way to increase inattention is to seem unconscious of it, or to allow it to pass unnoticed. Few things are so important as alacrity of movement; promptitude and readiness both in seeing and hearing; skill in finding out, at a moment's notice, who is the idlest boy in the class, and in giving him a verse to read, before his mind becomes thoroughly alienated from the subject, and before the contagion of his example has had time to spread among the rest. A sluggish, heavy, inactive-looking teacher can never gain the sympathy of children, or keep up their attention long.—S. S. Hand-Book.