attended in his
own village that he supposed himself to be really such, and made up his
mind that it was useless for him to try to be anything else: and I think
when our teacher first called him up for examination he was inclined to
be of the same opinion. The teacher first addressed him by saying, "How
far have you advanced in reading, my boy?" "Don't know, sir, never
thought any thing about how far I've been." "Well, at least," replied
the master, "you can tell me the names of the books you have studied, in
reading and spelling." "Oh, yes," replied the boy. "I've been clean
through 'Webster's Elementary and the Progressive Reader.'" "Can you
tell me the subject of any of your lessons?" "I can just remember one
story, about a dog that was crossing a river on a plank with a piece of
meat in his mouth, and when he saw his shadder in the water, made a
spring at it, and dropped the meat which he held in his mouth, and it
was at once carried away by the current." "Well," said the teacher, "as
you remember the story so well, you can perhaps tell me what lesson we
can learn from this fable." "I thought," replied the boy, "when I read
the story, that the best way is to hold on to what we are sure of, and
not grab after a shadder and lose the whole." "Your idea is certainly a
correct one," said the master, "and now we will turn to some other
branch of study; can you cipher?" "Don't know, I never tried," replied
the boy, with the greatest coolness imaginable. "Well," replied the
teacher, "we will, after a time, see how you succeed, when you _do_ try.
Can you tell me what the study of Geography teaches us?" "O," said the
boy, "geography tells all about the world, the folks who live in it, and
'most everything else." The master then asked him some questions
regarding the divisions of land and water, and for a short time he
answered with some degree of correctness. At length, while referring to
the divisions of water, the master said, "Can you tell me what is a
strait?" This question seemed a "puzzler" to him, and for some moments
he looked downward as if studying the matter; when the question was
repeated in rather a sharp tone, it seemed he thought it wiser to give
an answer of some kind than none at all, and he replied: "When a river
runs in a straight course, we call it straight, and when it twists and
winds about, we call it crooked." "A river is not a strait," replied the
teacher with the manner of one who prayed for patience.