Dear Children! encourage a habit of attention to whatever you undertake, and you may make that habit not only easy, but agreeable; and then, I will venture to promise you, you will like and even love your occupations. And thus, though you may not have so many talents as Hermione, you may call all those you do possess, into play, and make them the solace, pleasure and resources of your earthly career.
If you do this, I think you will not feel disposed to quarrel, as the Fairies did, with Ambrosia's gift; for increased knowledge of the world, and your own happy experience, will convince you more and more that no Fairy Gift is so well worth having, as,
THE LOVE OF EMPLOYMENT.
JOACHIM THE MIMIC.
There was, once upon a time, a little boy, who, living in the time when Genies and Fairies used now and then to appear, had all the advantage of occasionally seeing wonderful sights, and all the disadvantage of being occasionally dreadfully frightened. This little boy was one day walking alone by the sea side, for he lived in a fishing town, and as he was watching the tide, he perceived a bottle driven ashore by one of the big waves. He rushed forward to catch it before the wave sucked it back again, and succeeded. Now then he was quite delighted, but he could not get the cork out, for it was fastened down with rosin, and there was a seal on the top. So being very impatient, he took a stone and knocked the neck of the bottle off.
What was his surprize to find himself instantly suffocated with a smoke that made his eyes smart and his nose sneeze, just as much as if a quantity of Scotch snuff had been thrown over him! He jumped about and puffed a good deal, and was just beginning to cry, as a matter of course for a little boy when he is annoyed; when lo! and behold! he saw before him such an immense Genie, with black eyes and a long beard, that he forgot all about crying and began to shake with fear.