And when the craggy steeps are past,
May skulk a useless drone at last;
Nay, though he get A. B. at College,
Be stopt of his degree in knowledge.
Then cultivate your native soil,
The harvest will repay your toil;
And be it every parent’s care,
To plant the seeds of goodness there.
*.* The petty ambition of pretending to superior skill, in other languages, seems pleasantly and aptly ridiculed in the following anecdote:—
One of our modern modishly-bred ladies, boasting of her proficiency in the French tongue, asserted she understood and spoke it better than she did English; and for the truth, appealed to a French lady in company. The adroit Parisian very candidly and sensibly replied, “I am not, my dear madam, sufficiently acquainted with the English language to determine; but I should be ashamed and sorry to say, I spoke any language half so well as my own!”