“I HATE to tool my feet to school,” we hear the boy confessin’; “I’d
like to play the livelong day, and dodge the useful lesson. The rule of
three gives pain to me, old Euclid makes me weary, the verbs of Greece
disturb my peace, geography is dreary. I’ll go and fish; I do not wish
to spend my lifetime schooling; I do not care to languish there, and
hear the teacher drooling.” His books he hates, his maps and slates, and
all the schoolhouse litter; he feels oppressed and longs for rest, his
sorrows make him bitter. The years scoot on and soon are gone, for years
are restless friskers; the schoolboy small is now grown tall, and has
twelve kinds of whiskers. “Alas,” he sighs, “had I been wise, when I was
young and sassy, I well might hold, now that I’m old, a situation
classy. But all the day I thought of play, and fooled away my chances,
and here I strain, with grief and pain, in rotten circumstances. I’m
always strapped; I’m handicapped by lack of useful knowledge; through
briny tears I view the years I loafed in school and college!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------