9. "For example, if I were to lose my pocket-book on the road, and should tell you to walk back a mile, and look carefully all the way, until you found it, and if you did it faithfully and carefully, you would find a kind of satisfaction in doing it; and when you found the pocket-book, and brought it back to me, you would enjoy a high degree of happiness. Should not you?"
10. "Why, yes, sir, I should," said Rollo.—"And, yet, there would be no amusement in it. You might, perhaps, the next day, go over the same road, catching butterflies; that would be amusement. Now, the pleasure you would enjoy in looking for the pocket-book would be the solid satisfaction of useful work.
11. "The pleasure of catching butterflies would be the amusement of play. Now, the difficulty is, with you, that you have scarcely any idea, yet, of the first.
12. "You are all the time looking for the other; that is, the amusement. You begin to work, when I give you anything to do; but if you do not find amusement in it, you soon give it up. But if you would only persevere, you would find, at length, a solid satisfaction, that would be worth a great deal more."
13. Rollo sat still, and listened; but his father saw, from his looks, that he was not much interested in what he was saying; and he perceived that it was not at all probable that so small a boy could be reasoned into liking work.
14. In fact, it was rather hard for Rollo to understand all that his father said; and still harder for him to feel the force of it. He began to grow sleepy, and so his father let him go to bed.
LESSON LVII.
The same subject, concluded.
