Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/165

 Rh asking his tiny son: "Dick, have you got ten lines of Ovid by heart?"

"Yes, Papa, and I've wrote my exercise."

"Very well, then, you shall ride with me. The boy who does a little at seven years old, will do a great deal when he is fourteen."

This was poor encouragement for Dick, who had already tasted the sweets of application. It was better worth while for Miss Sally Spellwell to reach the perfection which her name implies, for she was adopted by a rich old lady with a marriageable son,—"a young Gentleman of such purity of Morals and good Understanding as is not everywhere to be found." In the breast of this paragon "strange emotions arise" at sight of the well-informed orphan; his mother, who sets a proper value on orthography, gives her full consent to their union; and we are swept from the contemplation of samplers and hornbooks to the triumphant conclusion: "Miss Sally Spell well now rides in her coach and six." Then follows the unmistakable moral:—