Mary Jay smiled; but Lucy’s father only said that it was true that church steeples were sometimes very high. Mary Jay saw how inadequate all Lucy’s ideas of the magnitude of mountains were; for, in fact, the principal mountains of the world are as much higher than the steeple of a church, as the house that Lucy lived in was higher than her duck house. In fact, Lucy was entirely unable to form any conception, when she heard the word mountain, of the vast and complicated idea expressed by it,—including the immense and towering elevations, the forests, the rocks, and the glaciers,—the broken ranges, the chasms and valleys, and the lofty summits, bare, and desolate, and cold. Her idea of a mountain was only that of a great green hill.
“Then,” said Mary Jay, “you would rather have Lucy not study any thing, but what she can learn thoroughly—reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic.”
“No,” replied Lucy’s father, “I did not say exactly that; I wouldn’t forbid her making a beginning upon geography or history,—if we can get some suitable book,—by way of variety, and to give her a little introduction to these studies. But I want her main time and attention, for several years, to be directed to the other studies, which she can pursue to advantage. Remember that every step she takes in learning the three great arts, of reading, writing, and arithmetic, is a step taken well and thoroughly,—but that whatever ground she goes over in history, geography, or philosophy, or any such study, is gone over in a very superficial manner; and that all the ideas she forms are childish, inadequate, and oftentimes entirely incorrect or absurd.”
Mary Jay was very much interested in what Lucy’s father had been saying; but Lucy did not understand it very well, and, as she could not understand, she had gradually ceased to pay any attention, and was now thinking of a plan of getting Royal to carry Diver down to the brook, which was at some distance behind the house, the next day, and let him swim there; and just as her father had finished the last remark, she said,—
“Father, may Royal and I carry Diver down to the brook to-morrow?”
“Diver?” repeated her father; “who is Diver?”
“O, haven’t you seen Diver yet, father?—Come out then, and see him. Mary Jay gave him to us.”
This was the first time that her father had heard of Diver. He allowed Lucy to take him by the hand, and to lead him out to Royal’s duck pond. He was very much pleased with it, indeed, and with Diver’s motions and frolics in the water. He said that he did not know before that a young duck was such a pretty thing. He took it up, and looked at its little web feet, which he admired exceedingly, and said that, if he was an engineer, he would attempt to construct paddles for a steamboat on the same principle.
“I should think that they would strike the bottom in shallow water,” said Mary Jay.
“And get broken,” said Lucy.