The strong vitality and gift of encouragement which can give this
help are also of value in saving from the morbid and exaggerated
friendships which sometimes spoil the best years of a girl's
education. If the character of those who teach them has force enough
not only to inspire admiration but to call out effort, it may rouse
the mind and will to a higher plane and make the things of which it
disapproves seem worthless. There are moments when the leading mind
must have strength enough for two, but this must not last. Its glory
is to raise the mind of the learner to equality with itself, not to
keep it in leading strings, but to make it grow so that, as the master
has often been outstripped by the scholar, the efforts of the younger
may even stimulate the achievements of the elder, and thus a noble
friendship be formed in the pursuit of what is best.
Educators of youth are exposed to certain professional dangers, which
lie very close to professional excellences of character. There is the
danger of remaining young for the sake of children, so that something
of mature development will be lacking. If there is not a stimulus from
outside, and it is not supplied for by an inward determination to
grow, the mental development may be arrested and contented-ness at a
low level be mistaken for the limit of capacity.
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