Of trifles, and toys, and amusements they tire,
For want of some useful employ.
Although for transgression the ground was accursed,
Yet gratefully man must allow,
’Twas really a blessing which doom’d him at first,
To live by the sweat of his brow.
Nursery Rhymes.
“Thank you, a hundred times over, uncle David!” said Harry, when the story was finished. “I shall take care not to be found hanging any day on a hook in the larder! Certainly, Frank, you must have spent a month with the good fairy; and I hope she will some day invite me to be made a scholar of too, for Laura and I still belong to the No-book family.”
“It is very important. Harry, to choose the best course from the beginning,” observed Lady Harriet. “Good or bad habits grow stronger and stronger every minute, as if an additional string were tied on daily, to keep us in the road where we walked the day before; so those who mistake the path of duty at first, find hourly increasing difficulty in turning round.”
“But grandmama!” said Frank, “you have put up some finger-posts to direct us right; and whenever I see ‘no passage this way,’ we shall wheel about directly.”