worried in the morning. Billy began to quake, for, bully though he was, he was afraid of the master. His teacher never punished except for such offences as quarrelling or cruelty to animals, and then he punished without mercy. He did not leave Billy long to himself; the cowardly bully had nothing to say for himself, and the teacher, taking up his cane, beat him till his howling might have been heard half way down the street. "You have been too long here, sir," he said, when he had finished; "a ferocious boy like you can do nothing but harm to others; take your books and begone; and remember, boys," he added, addressing the others, "I forbid any of you to speak to him; if he comes near the playground, stone him out of it, and never have anything to do with a boy who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on inoffensive animals."

229

PERSEVERANCE.

SOMETIMES when we are walking by the seaside, we find stones which have been worn quite smooth, or eaten into fantastic shapes, by the constant action of the water. If the waves were to dash but once upon the rocks, however violently, they would produce no effect; but their continual motion, although quite gentle, in the course of time wears away even the very hardest stones. Now, this ought to remind us of the value of perseverance. Nothing seems more unlikely than that such a soft substance as water should be able to hollow out the stubborn rock. And yet we see that it is done; and things just as unlikely have been done by perseverance.

It is not by making one tremendous effort that we will usually succeed in performing any difficult task; but by steadily persevering to make one effort after another till every

difficulty vanishes. We often hear boys and girls say that their lessons are too difficult, and that they are not so clever as others who learn them; but if we were to inquire, we should very likely find that they had given up after one trial, whilst the others tried again and again, and never rested till they had succeeded. It is no doubt true that some young people are cleverer than others, but it is perseverance that makes the great difference; and a slow boy, if he perseveres, will in the long run beat a clever one who trusts to his ability alone. Everybody has heard of the race between the greyhound and the tortoise, in which the lazy tortoise, by slow, steady effort, defeated the fleet greyhound. There is hardly any difficulty which perseverance is not able to overcome. Poor boys, whose parents could not afford to send them to school, have been known to learn to read from the letters on the gravestones in the churchyards, and

have afterwards become wise and learned men. Richard Arkwright kept a small barber's shop, but being an ingenious man, he kept thinking of a plan for spinning cotton by machinery; and after many failures, he succeeded, and lived to be one of the richest men in England. Palissy tried long to find out how to make china figures that could be baked in the kiln without falling to pieces, and for many years he was always unsuccessful; but he determined not to give in, and at last he succeeded, and made his fortune. Ferguson, when watching his sheep in the fields, learned, by perseverance and patience, to be an astronomer, and to know all the stars and constellations. There is a large book full of the accounts of men and women who have persevered in spite of many difficulties, till they arrived at fame, or fortune, or learning.

There is no reason why we should not do anything that others have done.

It may

take some time to learn what is difficult, and if we are not very clever, we may have to try much oftener than others have; but we will be sure to succeed if we just try often enough. We see no difference when the wave has washed once over a rock, nor even when it has washed over it a thousand times; and yet we know that by and bye it will wear it away. Besides, we have already learned a great deal by our perseverance. It needed a good many trials before we could walk alone. If any one had told us when we were three years old that before we were eight, we would have to learn and pronounce, and know the meaning of two or three thousand words, and to name hundreds of different objects, we might have thought such a task (if we knew rightly what it was) to be impossible; and yet every child of eight has done it, just by doing a little at a time, and every other difficulty may be overcome in the same way.