would be too long for me if I didn't study any."

"And so you don't mean to sign this petition?" inquired Sam.

"Of course I don't," replied Nat. "If the lessons are not too long,
there is no reason why I should petition to have them shorter."

"You can sign it for our sakes," pleaded Sam.

"Not if I think you had better study them as they are."

"Go to grass then," said Sam, becoming angry, "we can get along without
a squash peddler, I'd have you know. You think you are of mighty
consequence, and after you have killed a few more bugs perhaps you will
be."

"I won't sign your petition," said Frank, touched to the quick by this
abuse of Nat.

"Nor I," exclaimed Charlie Stone, another intimate associate of Nat's,
and a good scholar too.

Nat was sensitive to ridicule when it proceeded from certain persons,
but he did not care much for it when its author was Sam Drake, a boy
whom every teacher found dull and troublesome. He replied, however, in a
pleasant though sarcastic manner, addressing his remark to Frank and
Charlie,

"Sam is so brilliant that he expects to get along without study. He will
be governor yet."

Sam did not relish this thrust very much, but before he had a chance to
reply, Frank added, "I suppose you will make a speech, Sam, when you
present your petition." All laughed heartily at this point, and turned
away, leaving Sam to bite his lips and cogitate.

Sam was certainly in a predicament. He had several signers to his
petition, but they were all the lazy, backward scholars, and he knew it.
To send a petition to the teacher with these signatures alone, he knew
would be little less than an insult. If Nat, Frank, and Charlie, would
have signed it, he would not have hesitated. As it was, he did not dare
to present it, so the petition movement died because it couldn't live.

The teacher, however, heard of the movement, and some days thereafter,
thinking that his dull scholars might need a word of encouragement, he
embraced a favorable opportunity to make the following remarks:--

"It is not always the case that the brightest scholars in boyhood make
the most useful or learned men. There are many examples of distinguished
men, who were very backward scholars in youth. The great philosopher
Newton was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve
years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid
fellow, that his father was heard to say, if it pleased God to remove
any