"I have never looked at them since that night," replied Eben. "A burnt child dreads the fire, you know."
"But because the child has burnt himself once, he need not go cold all the rest of his life," said Mary, smiling.
"That's true, but to tell you the truth I don't think I shall ever make much of it," said Eben, in rather a desponding tone. "Even before I left off studying I found I forgot, and mixed things up so that I got discouraged and out of patience with the books, and myself, and everybody."
"That was because you worked too fiercely," said Mary. "You didn't allow yourself a minute's rest or recreation. I did just so when I first came here to go to school."
"I know it," remarked Eben. "You thought you couldn't spare an evening for prayer meeting any way in the world."
"Exactly so, and I soon found out what a mistake I was making. I got so tired and so confused I couldn't remember anything straight, and I began to think I was getting softening of the brain. I told Dr. Henry about it, and he said my brain must have been pretty soft to begin with not to see that it was nothing but overwork that ailed me. Now I rest two evenings in the week—one at prayer meeting and the other at sewing society—and I find I gain by it."
"Well," said Eben, as Mary paused, "and what then?"
"Why, if I were you, I wouldn't give up the anatomy altogether, but I would take it moderately. Set yourself a certain amount—say as much as you can do in an hour—and go over it again and again till it is fixed in your mind, and then put it away. I believe you would learn more in that way than you did in driving away as hard as you did the other time."
"Maybe so. I'll think about it. I can tell you, however, Mary, that it was not so much my studying that got me into the scrape as some other things. I just lived in a world of my own about those days. I was thinking all the time I was busy in the mill of the time when I should be a great doctor, and have people coming to me from all over the world; and in short," said Eben, candidly, "if there was a bigger fool in Lake County than I was in those days, I should like to see him, that's all. I got off a great deal better than I deserved."
"Didn't Dr. Porter say something about your studying French?" asked Mary, after a little silence.