s to be read, and the facts
gathered out of them, before a single map could be drawn, not to say a
geography book printed! Whereas now he could learn a multitude of things
about the various countries, their peoples and animals and plants, their
mountains and rivers and lakes and cities, without having set his foot
beyond the parish in which he was born. And so with everything else
after its kind. But it is more of what Willie learned to do than what he
learned to know that I have to treat.

When he went to school, his father made him a present of a pocket-knife.
He had had one before, but not a very good one; and this, having three
blades, all very sharp, he found a wonderful treasure of recourse. His
father also bought him a nice new slate.

Now there was another handy boy at school, a couple of years older than
Willie, whose father was a carpenter. He had cut on the frame of
his slate, not his initials only, but his whole name and
address,--_Alexander Spelman, Priory Leas_. Willie thought how nice it
would be with his new knife also to cut his name on his slate; only
he would rather make some difference in the way of doing it. What if,
instead of sinking the letters in the frame, he made them stand up from
the frame by cutting it away to some depth all round them. There was not
much originality in this, for it was only reversing what Spelman had
done; but it was more difficult, and would, he thought, be prettier.
Then what was he thus to carve? One would say, "Why, _William
Macmichael_, of course, and, if he liked, _Priory Leas_" But Willie was
a peculiar little fellow, and began to reason with himself whether he
had any right to put his own name on the slate. "My father did not give
me the slate," he said, "to be my very own. He gave me the knife like
that, but not the slate. When I am grown up, it will belong to Agnes.
What shall I put on it? What's mine's papa's, and what's papa's is his
own," argued Willie.--"_I_ know!" he said to himself at last.

The boys couldn't imagine what he meant to do when they saw him draw
first a D and then an O on the frame. But when they saw a C and a T
follow, they thought what a conceited little prig Willie was!

"Do you think you're a doctor because your father is, you little ape?"
they said.

"No, no," answered Willie, laughing heartily, but thinking, as he went
on with his work, that he might be one some day.

When the drawing of the letters was finished, there stood, all r