"
Miss Janie sighed and shrugged her shoulders. It was arranged that
Hopkins should deliver Nathaniel into my keeping some time the next
day. Hopkins, it appeared, was the only person on the farm who could
make the donkey go.
"I don't know what it is," said St. Leonard, "but he has a way with
him."
"And now," I said, "there remains but Dick."
"The lad I saw yesterday?" suggested St. Leonard. "Good-looking
young fellow."
"He is a nice boy," I said. "I don't really think I know a nicer boy
than Dick; and clever, when you come to understand him. There is
only one fault I have to find with Dick: I don't seem able to get
him to work."
Miss Janie was smiling. I asked her why.
"I was thinking," she answered, "how close the resemblance appears to
be between him and Nathaniel."
It was true. I had not thought of it.
"The mistake," said St. Leonard, "is with ourselves. We assume every
boy to have the soul of a professor, and every girl a genius for
music. We pack off our sons to cram themselves with Greek and Latin,
and put our daughters down to strum at the piano. Nine times out of
ten it is sheer waste of time. They sent me to Cambridge, and said I
was lazy. I was not lazy. I was not intended by nature for a Senior
Wrangler. I did not see the good of being a Senior Wrangler. Who
wants a world of Senior Wranglers? Then why start every young man
trying? I wanted to be a farmer.
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