_The same subject, continued._--ABBOTT.
1. That evening, when Rollo was just going to bed, his father took him
up in his lap, and told him he had concluded what to do.
2. "You see it is very necessary," said he, "that you should have the
power of confining yourself steadily and patiently to a single
employment, even if it does not amuse you.
3. "I have to do that, and all people have to do it; and you must learn
to do it, or you will grow up indolent and useless. You cannot do it
now, it is very plain.
4. "If I set you to doing anything, you go on as long as the novelty and
the amusement last; and then your patience is gone, and you contrive
every possible excuse for getting away from your task.
5. "Now, I am going to give you one hour's work to do, every forenoon
and afternoon. I shall give you such things to do as are perfectly plain
and easy, so that you will have no excuse for neglecting your work, or
leaving it.
6. "But yet I shall choose such things as will afford you no amusement;
for my wish is that you should learn to work, not play."
7. "But, father," said Rollo, "you told me there was pleasure in work,
the other day. But how can there be any pleasure in it, if you choose
such things as have no amusement in them, at all?"
8. "The pleasure of working," said his father, "is not the fun of doing
amusing things, but the satisfaction and solid happiness of being
faithful in duty, and accomplishing some useful purpose.
9. "For example, if I were to lose my pocket-book on the road, and
should tell you to walk back a mile, and look carefully all the way,
until you found it, and if you did it faithfully and carefully, you
would find a kind of satisfaction in doing it; and when you found the
pocket-book, and brought it back to me, you would enjoy a high degree
of happiness. Should not you?"
10. "Why, yes, sir, I should," said Rollo.--"And, yet, there would be no
amusement in it. You might, perhaps, the next day, go over the same
road, catching butterflies; that would be amusement. Now, the pleasure
you would enjoy in looking for the pocket-book would be the solid
satisfaction of useful work.
11. "The pleasure of catching butterflies would be the amusement of
play. Now, the difficulty is, with you, that you have scarcely any idea,
yet, of the first.
12. "You are all the time looking for the other; that is, the amusement.
You begin to work, when I give you anything to do; but if you do not
find amusement in it, you soon give it up. But if you would only
persevere, you would find, at length, a solid satisfaction, that would
be worth a great deal more."
13. Rollo sat still, and listened; but his father saw, from his looks,
that he was not much interested in what he was saying; and he perceived
that it was not at all probable that so small a boy could be reasoned
into liking work.
14. In fact, it was rather hard for Rollo to understand all that his
father said; and still harder for him to feel the force of it. He began
to grow sleepy, and so his father let him go to bed.