“Then read it loud, you plockit.”
Dominick read aloud—
“There is nothing appears so clearly an object of the mind or intellect only as the future does, since we can find no place for its existence any where else: not but the same, if we consider, is equally true of the past—”
“Well, co on—What stops the plockit? Can’t you reat Enclish now?”
“Yes, sir; but I was trying to understand it. I was considering, that this is like what they would call an Irish bull, if I had said it.”
Little Dominick could not explain what he meant in English, that Mr. Owen ap Jones would understand; and, to punish him for his impertinent observation, the boy was doomed to learn all that Harris and Lowth have written to explain the nature of shall and will. The reader, if he be desirous of knowing the full extent of the penance enjoined, may consult Lowth’s Grammar, p. 52, ed. 1799, and Harris’s Hermes, p. 10, 11, and 12, 4th edition. Undismayed at the length of his task, little Dominick only said, “I hope, if I say it all without missing a word, you will not give my mother a bad account of me and my grammar studies, sir.”
“Say it all first, without missing a word, and then I shall see what I shall say,” replied Mr. Owen ap Jones.
Even the encouragement of this oracular answer excited the boy’s fond hopes so keenly, that he lent his little soul to the task, learned it perfectly, said it at night, without missing one word, to his friend Edwards, and said it the next morning, without missing one word, to his master.
“And now, sir,” said the boy, looking up, “will you write to my mother? And shall I see her? And shall I go home?”
“Tell me first, whether you understant all this that you have learnt so cliply,” said Mr. Owen ap Jones.