"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I can understand how the dog and the fox are enemies; they can both bite: but why a dog should hate and pursue a hare, that can do nothing but run, I can't understand." In spite of all his knowledge, Eric often found himself in a position where nothing but conjecture could help him; he said,—
"I think that the dog in a wild state found his chief food in the defenceless animals, as the fox does. The dog is really a tame cousin of the fox; education has changed him only so far that he now bites hares to death, but does not eat them. Animals that feed on plants live in the open air, but beasts of prey, in caves."
For a short time the boy sat silent, then he suddenly said,—
"How strange!"
"What is it?"
"You will laugh at me, but I have been thinking,"—as he spoke a bright smile broke over the boy's face, showing the dimples in his cheeks and chin,—"the wild animals have no regular hours for their meals, they eat all day long; dogs have only been trained by us men to take their food at certain times."
"Certainly," replied Eric; "the regulation of our lives by fixed hours only begins with education."
And without tedious or unnecessary diffuseness, Eric succeeded in bringing before his pupil what a great thing it is to measure time, and to set our daily life to the rhythm of the universe, of the whole starry world.
Improbable as it may seem, it was really the fact, that from the time of this conversation, which began with so small and insignificant a matter, but took so wide a range, the hours of study of the pair were strictly fixed: Roland wished to have no more unoccupied time. This was a great step in his life; what had before seemed like tyranny was now a self-imposed law.