There was no alternative. I went home, of course, and delivered the message to my mother. I told her, however, that I thought my head was better, hoping to avoid taking the nauseous medicine. But it was of no use. It was too late. She understood my case as well as my father did. She knew well enough my disease was laziness. So she prepared the rhubarb—an unusually generous dose, I always thought—and I had to swallow every morsel of it. Dear me! how bitter it was! It makes me sick to think of a dose of rhubarb, let me be ever so well. I am sure I would have rode horse all day—and all night, too, for that matter—rather than to have been doctored after that sort. But it cured my laziness pretty effectually, and it was a long time before I told another lie, too.
"Honesty is the best policy," children, depend upon it, though there is another and a better reason, as you very well know, why you should always speak the truth.
STORY SECOND.
HOW A ROGUE FEELS WHEN HE IS CAUGHT.
When I was a little boy, as near as I can recollect, about nine years of age, I went with my brother one bright Saturday afternoon, when there was no school, to visit at the house of Captain Perry. The captain was esteemed one of the kindest and best-natured neighbors in Willow Lane, where my father lived; and Julian, the captain's eldest son, very near my own age, was, among all the boys at school, my favorite play-fellow. Captain Perry had two bee-hives in his garden, where we were all three at play; and as I watched the busy little fellows at work bringing in honey from the fields, all at once I thought it would be a very fine thing to thrust a stick into a hole which I saw in one of the hives, and bring out some of the honey. My brother and Julian did not quite agree with me in this matter. They thought, as nearly as I can recollect, that there were three good reasons against this mode of obtaining honey: first, I should be likely to get pretty badly stung; secondly, the act would be a very mean and cowardly piece of mischief; and, thirdly, I should be found out.
Still, I was bent on the chivalrous undertaking. I procured a stick of the right size, and marched up to the hive to make the attack. While I was deliberating, with the stick already a little way in the hole, whether I had better thrust it in suddenly, and then scamper away as fast as my legs could carry me, or proceed so deliberately that the bees would not suspect what was the matter, Captain Perry happened to come into the garden; and I was so busy with my mischief, that I did not notice him until he advanced within a rod or two of the bee-hives. He mistrusted what I was about. "Roderick," said he. I looked around. I am sure I would have given all I was worth in the world, not excepting my little pony, which I regarded as a fortune, if, by some magic or other, I could have got out of this scrape. But it was too late. I hung my head down, as may be imagined, while the captain went on with his speech: "Roderick, if I were in your place (I heartily wished he was in my place, but I did not say so; I said nothing, in fact), if I were in your place, I would not disturb those poor, harmless bees, in that way. If you should put that stick into the hive, as you were thinking of doing, it would take the bees a whole week to mend up their cells. That is not the way we get honey. I don't wonder you are fond of honey, though. Children generally are fond of it; and if you will go into the house, Mrs Perry will give you as much as you wish, I am sure."
This was twenty years ago—perhaps more. I have met Captain Perry a hundred times since; yet even now I cannot look upon his frank, honest countenance, but I distinctly call to mind the Quixotic adventure with the bees, and I feel almost as much ashamed as I did when I was detected.