Charles. I wish poor I could find it out.
Mother. I can tell it to you in one word which you used just now. It is as good as “Open Sesame” in the play of the Forty Thieves which you read the other day.
Charles. What can it be?
Mother. Attention—Charles—attention! that will open the door of your mind and let the lesson in.
Charles. Oh dear! I wish bawling the word out aloud would answer the purpose.
Mother. I cannot say that it will, so my comparison is not a good one; but I wished to fix your attention, so I referred to something that had amused you. But, in good earnest, Charles, the only reason why Richard learns quicker than you do is, that he never allows himself to think of anything else while he is getting his lesson. You speak of yourself as studying as long as you are holding the book in your hand, though in fact you are not studying one quarter of the time. What is studying, Charles?
Charles. Trying to fix something in my mind.
Mother. Very good; a better answer than I expected. Now, were you trying to fix your lesson in your mind while you were watching Jerry? or while you were scratching with your pencil on that window-seat? or whistling to my canary bird?
Charles. No, indeed.
Mother. Yet during the three quarters of an hour you have sat at the window, with a book in your hand, these have been your principal employments. Once or twice you began to read the lesson over to yourself, but something would draw off your attention in the midst; your thoughts were gone from it in an instant; the slight impression it had made was effaced; and when you returned to your task, you were just where you had been ten minutes before. Yet at nine o’clock you would jump up in dismay, exclaiming, “There, I have been studying this plaguy lesson more than an hour, and I can’t say it yet. Is it not enough to discourage a body, mother?”