At length he got started, and wrote several lines without stopping.  Now he thought he should go ahead without further trouble; but he soon found himself again brought to a dead halt.  He began to scribble and draw rude figures upon a piece of waste paper, hoping the next sentence, in continuance of his letter, would soon pop into his head; but instead of anything popping in, his ideas began to pop out, so that he almost forgot the letter, amid the unmeaning flourishes his pen was making.  Then, suddenly thinking of the scarcely-commenced task before him, he read and re-read the few lines he had written, but could not determine what to say next.  Lifting up the lid of the desk, he found a variety of bills, receipts, accounts and letters scattered about.  Disregarding the injunction of his uncle, and in violation of one of the plainest rules of good breeding, he concluded to open one of the letters, and see if he could not gain some hint from it, to aid him in completing his own.  The letter he opened proved to be a short business message, and it was written in such a difficult hand, that he could not read half the words.  He then looked into several other letters, but none of them afforded him any aid.

After idling away half an hour in this manner, he resumed his letter, and began to make some progress upon it, when the lively chirping and twittering of a party of birds in an apple-tree near the window, attracted his attention.  He laid down his pen, and watched their movements awhile.  They were swallows; and from their actions, Oscar soon discovered that the old birds were teaching their little ones how to fly.  There were several nests of these swallows, under the rafters of Mr. Preston’s barn; and as they had recently had accessions to their families, Oscar concluded this must be the first appearance of the new-comers in public.  The old birds fluttered back and forth, twittering and talking to the young ones all the while, and trying to entice them to commit themselves again to their wings.  The little fearful things looked doubtingly, first one way and then another, as though they would gladly launch away upon their destined element, if they were only sure they should not tumble ingloriously to the ground.  The clamor of the old ones increased every moment.  They called and coaxed more earnestly, and fluttered more impatiently, until at length the young birds worked up their courage to the requisite point, and away the whole flock darted, towards the barn.

Now that the swallows were out of his way, Oscar returned to his letter once more.  Had he learned a lesson of self-confidence from the example of the little swallows, the few minutes he spent in watching their movements would have been well employed.  But instead of his confidence increasing, he was now almost sick of the sight of the letter, and began to doubt whether he should ever finish it.  While he was hesitating whether he had better tear it up, or try once more to go on with it, a sweet childish voice from the garden engaged his attention.  He looked from the window, and saw little Mary sitting down upon the grass, in a shady spot, with a large book open before her.  She was looking at the engravings in the volume, and was talking very earnestly to herself, and to the figures in the pictures.