learn another.

3. I think that in this way you will find study is not so hard a thing
as it seemed to you at first, and you will have another explanation of
that wise saying, _Divide and conquer_.

4. I will now tell you another story that I read when I was a little
boy. It was called a fable. But before I tell you the story, I must
tell you what a fable is.

5. A fable is a story which is not true. But, although it is not a true
story, it is a very useful one, because it always teaches us a good
lesson.

6. In many fables, birds and beasts are represented as speaking. Now,
you know that birds and beasts cannot talk, and therefore the story, or
fable, which tells us that birds and beasts, and other things, that are
not alive, do talk, cannot be true.

7. But I have told you, that although fables are not true stories, they
are very useful to us, because they teach us a useful lesson. This
lesson that they teach is called the _moral_ of the fable; and that is
always the best fable that has the best moral to it, or, in other words,
that teaches us the best lesson.

8. The story, or the fable, that I promised to tell you, is in the next
lesson, and I wish you, when you read it, to see whether you can find
out what the lesson, or moral, is which it teaches; and whether it is at
all like the story of the father and the bundle of sticks, that I told
you in the last lesson. While you read it, be very careful that you do
not pass over any word the meaning of which you do not know.

LESSON IV.

_The Discontented Pendulum._--JANE TAYLOR.

[Illustration]

1. An old clock, that had stood for fifty years in a farmer's kitchen,
without giving its owner any cause of complaint, early one summer's
morning, before the family was stirring, suddenly stopped.

2. Upon this, the dial-plate (if we may credit the fable) changed
countenance with alarm; the hands made a vain effort to continue their
course; the wheels remained motionless with surprise; the weights hung
speechless;--each member felt disposed to lay the blame on the others.

3. At length the dial instituted a formal inquiry as to the cause of
the stagnation, when hands, wheels, weights, with one voice, protested
their innocence.

4. But now a faint tick was heard below from the pendulum, who thus
spoke:--"I confess myself to be the sole cause of the present stoppage;
and I am willing, for the general satisfaction, to assign my reasons.
The truth is, that