_The same subject, continued._
1. I have another lesson to teach you from the same story of the old man
and the bundle of sticks, which I think will be very useful to you, and
will make your lessons very much easier to you.
2. Whenever you have a lesson to learn, do not look at it all at once,
and say, I cannot learn this long lesson; but divide it into small
parts, and say to yourself, I will try to learn this first little part,
and after I have learned that, I will rest two or three minutes, and
then I will learn another little part, and then rest again a few
minutes, and then I will learn another.
3. I think that in this way you will find study is not so hard a thing
as it seemed to you at first, and you will have another explanation of
that wise saying, _Divide and conquer_.
4. I will now tell you another story that I read when I was a little
boy. It was called a fable. But before I tell you the story, I must
tell you what a fable is.
5. A fable is a story which is not true. But, although it is not a true
story, it is a very useful one, because it always teaches us a good
lesson.
6. In many fables, birds and beasts are represented as speaking. Now,
you know that birds and beasts cannot talk, and therefore the story, or
fable, which tells us that birds and beasts, and other things, that are
not alive, do talk, cannot be true.
7. But I have told you, that although fables are not true stories, they
are very useful to us, because they teach us a useful lesson. This
lesson that they teach is called the _moral_ of the fable; and that is
always the best fable that has the best moral to it, or, in other words,
that teaches us the best lesson.
8. The story, or the fable, that I promised to tell you, is in the next
lesson, and I wish you, when you read it, to see whether you can find
out what the lesson, or moral, is which it teaches; and whether it is at
all like the story of the father and the bundle of sticks, that I told
you in the last lesson. While you read it, be very careful that you do
not pass over any word the meaning of which you do not know.