, and put on every daily article of dress every
morning, as long as I lived. There was nothing I disliked so much; and
yet it was the thing that must be done every day of my whole life."

"Did you tell anybody?" asked Hugh.

"No; I was ashamed to do that: but I remember I cried. You see how it
turns out. Grown people, who have got to do everything by habit, so
easily as not to think about it, wash and dress every morning, without
ever being weary of it. We do not consider so much as once a year what
we are doing at dressing-time, though at seven years old it is a very
laborious and tiresome affair to get ready for breakfast."

"It is the same about writing letters," observed Agnes. "The first
letter I ever wrote was to Aunt Shaw; and it took so long, and was so
tiresome, that, when I thought of all the exercises I should have to
write for Miss Harold, and all the letters that I must send to my
relations when I grew up, I would have given everything I had in the
world not to have learned to write. Oh! How I pitied papa, when I saw
sometimes the pile of letters that were lying to go to the post!"

"And how do you like corresponding with Phil now?"

Agnes owned, with blushes, that she still dreaded the task for some days
before, and felt particularly gay when it was done. Her mother believed
that, if infants could think and look forward, they would be far more
terrified with the prospect of having to walk on their two legs all
their lives, than lame people could be at having to learn the art in
part over again. Grown people are apt to doubt whether they can learn a
new language, though children make no difficulty about it: the reason of
which is, that grown people see at one view the whole labour, while
children do not look beyond their daily task. Experience, however,
always brings relief. Experience shows that every effort comes at its
proper time, and that there is variety or rest in the intervals. People
who have to wash and dress every morning have other things to do in the
after part of the day; and, as the old fable tells us, the clock that
has to tick, before it is worn out, so many millions of times, as it
perplexes the mind to think of, has exactly the same number of seconds
to do it in; so that it never has more work on its hands than it can get
through. So Hugh would find that he could move about on each separate
occasion, as he wanted; and practice would, in time, enable him to do it
without a