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.

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1.  The next day, his father gave him his work.  He was to begin at ten o’clock, and work till eleven, gathering beans in the garden.

2.  His father went out with him, and waited to see how long it took him to gather half a pint, and then calculated how many he could gather in an hour, if he was industrious.  Rollo knew that if he failed now he should be punished in some way, although his father did not say anything about punishment.

3.  When he was set at work, the day before, about the nails, he was making an experiment, as it were, and he did not expect to be actually punished, if he failed; but now he knew that he was under orders, and must obey.

4.  So he worked very diligently, and when his father came out, at the end of the hour, he found that Rollo had got rather more beans than he had expected.  Rollo was much gratified to see his father pleased; and he carried in his large basket full of beans to show his mother, with great pleasure.

5.  Then he went to play, and enjoyed himself very highly.  The next morning, his father said to him,—­“Well, Rollo, you did very well yesterday; but doing right once is a very different thing from forming a habit of doing right.  I can hardly expect you will succeed as well to-day; or, if you should to-day, that you will to-morrow.”

6.  Rollo thought he should.  His work was to pick up all the loose stones in the road, and carry them, in a basket, to a great heap of stones behind the barn.

7.  But he was not quite faithful.  His father observed him playing several times.  He did not speak to him, however, until the hour was over; and then he called him in.