“Oh, thank you, Johnny!” and then he went at once to business.
“It’s all the capitals,” he said, “I can learn them fast enough, when I’ve found them, but it does seem to me that the folks who make maps hide the capitals and rivers and mountains, on purpose. Now, of course Maine has a capital, I s’pose, but can you see it? I can’t, a bit.”
“Why, here it is, as plain as the nose on your face,” said Johnny, and put his finger on it without loss of time.
Teddy screwed up his eyes and forehead as he looked at the map, saying finally,—
“So it is! I saw that, but it looked like ‘Atlanta,’ and I didn’t see the star at all.”
This was repeated with almost every one; Teddy was unusually quick at committing to memory, but he made what at first seemed to Johnny the most stupid blunders in seeing. However, the lesson was learned, or rather, Teddy was in a fair way to have it learned, and Johnny was back at his Latin, fifteen minutes before the bell rang. And, to his astonishment, the Latin no longer refused to be conquered. He had done good work at it, the day before, better work than he knew, and now, feeling how little time he had left, he studied with unusual spirit and resolution. When the bell rang, he was quite ready for it, and his recitation that afternoon was entirely perfect, for the first time since he began that terrible study. He did not know how much more he had gained in the conquest of his selfishness; but all large victories are built upon many small ones, and the same is, if possible, even truer of all large defeats. Habit is powerful, to help or to hinder.
And a most unexpected good to little Ted grew out of that day’s experience; one of the things which prove, if it needs proving, that we never can tell where the result of our smallest words and deeds will stop. One of Johnny’s young cousins had recently been suffering much from head-ache, which was at last found to be caused wholly by a defect in her eyes. They saw unequally, and a pair of spectacles remedied the defect and stopped the head-ache, beside affording much enjoyment for the cousinhood over her venerable appearance. Johnny was puzzling over Teddy’s apparent stupidity in one way, and evident brightness in another, when he suddenly remembered his cousin Nanny, and clapped his hands, saying to himself as he did so,—
“That’s it, I do believe! He can’t see straight!”
Johnny lost no time in suggesting this to Teddy, who, in his turn, spoke of it to his mother. She had already begun to notice the strained look about his eyes, and she took him at once to an oculist. The result was, that he shortly afterward appeared in a pair of spectacles, and told Johnny with some little pride,—
