"What are you sitting there for, Dick? Don't you hear the school bell?"
"Yes; I hear it, Bill."
"Then get up and come along, or you will be late."
"I don't care if I am. I don't like to go to school."
"You don't?"
"No, indeed. I'd never go to school if I could help it. What's the use of so much learning? I'm going to a trade as soon as I get old enough; and Pete Elder says that a boy who don't know A B C, can learn a trade just as well as one who does."
"I don't know any thing about that," replied William Brown; "but father says, the more learning I get when a boy, the more successful in life will I be when a man; that is, if I make a good use of my learning."
"What good is grammar going to do a mechanic, I wonder?" said Richard, contemptuously. "What use will the double rule of three, or fractions, be to him?"
"They may be of a great deal of use. Father says we cannot learn too much while we are boys. He says he never learned any thing in his life that did not come of use to him at some time or other."
"Grammar, and geography, and double rule of three, will never be of any use to me."