The student who scans the records of historical achievements and of the triumphs of art, music, science, literature, and philanthropy must realize that ardent wishing is the condition precedent to further extension in any of these lines, and he must be aware, too, that the ranks of wishers must be recruited from among the children of our schools.  The yearning to achieve is the urge of the divine part of each one of us, and it naturally follows that whoever does not have this yearning has been reduced to the plane of abnormality in that the divine part of him has been subordinated, submerged, stifled.  Every fervent wish is a prayer that emanates from this divine part of us, and, in all reverence, it may be said that we help to answer our own prayers.  When we wish ardently we work earnestly to cause our dreams to come true.  We are told that every wish comes true if we only wish hard enough, and this statement finds abundant confirmation in the experiences of those who have achieved.

The child’s wishes have their origin and abode in his native interests and when we have determined what his wishes are, we have in hand the clue that will lead us to the inmost shrine of his native tendencies.  This, as has been so frequently said, is the point of attack for all our teaching, this the particular point that is most sensitive to educational inoculation.  If we find that the boy is eager to have a wireless outfit and is working with supreme intensity to crystallize his wish into tangible and workable form, quite heedless of clock hours, it were unkind to the point of cruelty and altogether unpedagogical to force him away from this congenial task into some other work that he will do only in a heartless and perfunctory way.  If we yearn to have him study Latin, we shall do well to carry the wireless outfit over into the Latin field, for the boy will surely follow wherever this outfit leads.  But if we destroy the wireless apparatus, in the hope that we shall thus stimulate his interest in Latin, the scar that we shall leave upon his spirit will rise in judgment against us to the end of life.  The Latin may be desirable and necessary for the boy, but the wireless comes first in his wishes and we must go to the Latin by way of the wireless.

It is the high privilege of the teacher to make and keep her pupils hungry, to stimulate in them an incessant ardent longing and yearning.  This is her chief function.  If she does this she will have great occasion to congratulate herself upon her own progress as well as theirs.  If they are kept hungry, the sources of supply will not be able to elude them, for children have great facility and resourcefulness in the art of foraging.  They readily discover the lurking places of the substantials as well as of the tid-bits and the sweets.  They easily scent the trail of the food for which their spiritual or bodily hunger calls.  The boy who yearns for the wireless need not be told where he may find screws, bolts, and