Dale
would have done, to explain what seemed obscure, and enforce what was
profitable, in private talk, with that stray lamb from another's fold.

Now I question much if all Dr. Riccabocca's maxims, though they were
often very moral and generally very wise, served to expand the peasant
boy's native good qualities, and correct his bad, half so well as the
few simple words, not at all indebted to Machiavelli, which Leonard had
once reverently listened to when he stood by Mark's elbow-chair, yielded
up for the moment to the good parson, worthy to sit in it; for Mr. Dale
had a heart in which all the fatherless of the parish found their place.
Nor was this loss of tender, intimate, spiritual lore so counterbalanced
by the greater facilities for purely intellectual instruction as modern
enlightenment might presume. For, without disputing the advantage of
knowledge in a general way, knowledge, in itself, is not friendly
to content. Its tendency, of course, is to increase the desires, to
dissatisfy us with what is, in order to urge progress to what may be;
and in that progress, what unnoticed martyrs among the many must fall
baffled and crushed by the way! To how large a number will be given
desires they will never realize, dissatisfaction of the lot from which
they will never rise! Allons! one is viewing the dark side of the
question. It is all the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has
already caused Lenny Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after
looking round and seeing no one near him, groan out querulously,--"And
am I born to dig a potato ground?"

Pardieu, my friend Lenny, if you live to be seventy, and ride in your
carriage, and by the help of a dinner-pill digest a spoonful of curry,
you may sigh to think what a relish there was in potatoes, roasted in
ashes after you had digged them out of that ground with your own stout
young hands. Dig on, Lenny Fairfield, dig on! Dr. Riccabocca will
tell you that there was once an illustrious personage--[The Emperor
Diocletian]--who made experience of two very different occupations,--one
was ruling men, the other was planting cabbages; he thought planting
cabbages much the pleasanter of the two!

CHAPTER XVIL

Dr. Riccabocca had secured Lenny Fairfield, and might therefore
be considered to have ridden his hobby in the great whirligig with
adroitness and success. But Miss Jemima was still driving round in her
car, handling the reins, and flourishing the whi