cover that there is something wanting in
the character of Ebenezer Ditto; and it takes a longer time still to
make out exactly what that something is. He's an ordinary-looking and
ordinarily-behaved boy. There's nothing amiss with the cut of his
coat--it's neither extra grand nor extra shabby; there's nothing queer
about his voice--he doesn't stammer and he doesn't squeak; there's
nothing remarkable about his conversation or his actions--he's not a
dunce, though he's not clever; he's not a scamp, though he's not goody;
he never offends any one, though he never becomes great friends with any
one. What is it makes us not take to Ebenezer? Why is it, on the
whole, we rather despise him, and feel annoyed when in his society?
For, it is the truth, we _don't_ much care about him.

Well, the answer to this question may be, as I have said, not very
readily discovered; but if you watch Master Ditto carefully, and make up
your mind, you will get at the bottom of the mystery, you will find that
it is this very "ordinary" manner about him to which you object. The
fellow is dull--he is unoriginal.

You feel sometimes as if you would give a sovereign to see Ebenezer
stand on his head, by way of variety. It annoys you when he sits there
with his eyes on you, smiling when you smile, frowning when you frown,
talking about the weather when you talk about the weather, and when you
whistle "Nancy Lee" whistling his everlasting "Grandfather's Clock." It
is a relief, by the way, even to hear him whistle a different tune, for
it is about the only thing in which he does take an independent course.
But, if truth were known, it would come out he only knows this one tune,
and that is the reason. He has not originality enough in him to learn a
second.

It _is_ an annoying thing to be copied and imitated by any one, most of
all by a fellow one's own age. We can understand the little child
imitating its father, and we enjoy seeing what capers it sometimes cuts
in the attempt, but there's nothing either interesting or amusing in the
way Ebenezer goes on. When, for instance, by a sudden inspiration of
genius, you take it into your head to shy a slice of apple across the
room at Jack Sleepy just while he is in the act of yawning, with his
mouth open wide enough to let a wheelbarrow down, it is not pleasant
that immediately afterwards some one at your side should hurl a walnut
at the same person and wound him seriously in the eye. Besides m