ardship, but Donal saw that he
needed to be taught to rest. Ten times in those ten minutes he was on
the point of jumping up, but Donal found a word sufficient to restrain
him. When the ten minutes were over, he set him an addition sum. The
boy protested he knew all the rules of arithmetic.

"But," said Donal, "I must know that you know them; that is my
business. Do this one, however easy it is."

The boy obeyed, and brought him the sum--incorrect.

"Now, Davie," said Donal, "you said you knew all about addition, but
you have not done this sum correctly."

"I have only made a blunder, sir."

"But a rule is no rule if it is not carried out. Everything goes on
the supposition of its being itself, and not something else. People
that talk about good things without doing them are left out. You are
not master of addition until your addition is to be depended upon."

The boy found it hard to fix his attention: to fix it on something he
did not yet understand, would be too hard! he must learn to do so in
the pursuit of accuracy where he already understood! then he would not
have to fight two difficulties at once--that of understanding, and that
of fixing his attention. But for a long time he never kept him more
than a quarter of an hour at work on the same thing.

When he had done the sum correctly, and a second without need of
correction, he told him to lay his slate aside, and he would tell him a
fairy-story. Therein he succeeded tolerably--in the opinion of Davie,
wonderfully: what a tutor was this, who let fairies into the
school-room!

The tale was of no very original construction--the youngest brother
gaining in the path of righteousness what the elder brothers lose
through masterful selfishness. A man must do a thing because it is
right, even if he die for it; but truth were poor indeed if it did not
bring at last all things subject to it! As beauty and truth are one,
so are truth and strength one. Must God be ever on the cross, that we
poor worshippers may pay him our highest honour? Is it not enough to
know that if the devil were the greater, yet would not God do him
homage, but would hang for ever on his cross? Truth is joy and
victory. The true hero is adjudged to bliss, nor can in the nature of
things, that is, of God, escape it. He who holds by life and resists
death, must be victorious; his very life is a slaying of death. A man
may die for his opinion, and may only be living to himself: