Rollo at Work Part 14

Rollo jumped up, and said, "Let us go and see."

They went up garret, and found, hanging up, quite a quant.i.ty of old clothes. Some belonged to Jonas, some to himself, and they selected the worst ones they could find, and carried them down into the shed.

Then Rollo went and called his mother to come out, and he asked her if she thought it would hurt those old clothes to get wet. She laughed, and said no; and said she would go and ask his father to let him go out with them.

In a few minutes, she came back, and said that his father consented, but that he must go himself, and put on the old clothes, without troubling his mother, and then, when he came back, he must rub himself dry with a towel, and put on his common dress, and put the wet ones somewhere in the shed to dry; and when they were dry, put them all back carefully in their places.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Work in the Rain.]

Rollo ran up to his room, and rigged himself out, as well as he could, putting one of Jonas's great coats over him, and wearing an old broad-brimmed straw hat on his head. Thus equipped, he took his hoe, and sallied forth in the rain.

At first he thought it was good fun; but, in about half an hour, he began to be tired, and to feel very uncomfortable. The rain spattered in his face, and leaked down the back of his neck; and then the ground was wet and slippery; and once or twice he almost gave up in despair.

He persevered, however, and before dark he got it done. He raked off all the weeds, and smoothed the ground over carefully, for he knew his father would come out to examine it as soon as the storm was over. Then he went in, rubbed himself dry, changed his clothes, and went and took his seat by the kitchen fire.

His father came out a few minutes after, and said, "Well, Rollo, have you got through?"

"Yes, sir," said Rollo.

"Well, I am _very_ glad of it. I was afraid you would have lost your garden. As it is, perhaps it will do you good."

"How?" said Rollo. "What good?"

"It will teach you, I hope, that it is dangerous to neglect or postpone doing one's duty. We cannot always depend on repairing the mischief. When the proper opportunity is once lost, it may never return."

Rollo said nothing, but he thought he should remember the lesson as long as he lived.

He remembered it for the rest of that summer, at any rate, and did not run any more risks. He kept his ground very neat, and his father did not have to give him notice again. His corn grew finely, and he had many a good roasting ear from it; and his flowers helped ornament the parlor mantel-piece all the summer; and the green peas, and the beans, and the muskmelons, and the other vegetables, which his father took and paid for, amounted to more than two dollars.

Advice.

"Well, Rollo," said his father, one evening, as he was sitting on his cricket before a bright, glowing fire, late in the autumn, after all his fruits were gathered in, "you have really done some work this summer, haven't you?"

"Yes, sir," said Rollo; and he began to reckon up the amount of peas, and beans, and corn, and other things, that he had raised.

"Yes," said his father, "you have had a pretty good garden; but the best of it is your own improvement. You are really beginning to get over some of the faults of _boy work_."

"What are the faults of boy work?" said Rollo.

"One of the first is, confounding work with play,--or rather expecting the pleasure of play, while they are doing work. There is great pleasure in doing work, as I have told you before, when it is well and properly done, but it is very different from the pleasure of play. It comes later; generally after the work is done. While you are doing your work, it requires _exertion_ and _self-denial_, and sometimes the sameness is tiresome.

"It is so with _men_ when they work, but they expect it will be so, and persevere notwithstanding; but _boys_, who have not learned this, expect their work will be play; and, when they find it is not so, they get tired, and want to leave it or to find some new way.

"You showed your wish to make play of your work, that day when you were getting in your chips, by insisting on having just such a basket as you happened to fancy; and then, when you got a little tired of that, going for the wheelbarrow; and then leaving the chips altogether, and going to piling the wood."

"Well, father," said Rollo, "do not men try to make their work as pleasant as they can?"

"Yes, but they do not continually change from one thing to another in hopes to make it _amusing_. They always expect that it will be laborious and tiresome, and they understand this beforehand, and go steadily forward notwithstanding. You are beginning to learn to do this.

"Another fault, which you boys are very apt to fall into, is impatience.

This comes from the first fault; for you expect, when you go to work, the kind of pleasure you have in play, and when you find you do not obtain it, or meet with any difficulties, you grow impatient, and get tired of what you are doing.

"From this follows the third fault--_changeableness_, or want of perseverance. Instead of steadily going forward in the way they commence, boys are very apt to abandon one thing after another, and to try this new way, and that new way, so as to accomplish very little in any thing."

"Do you think I have overcome all these?" said Rollo.

"In part," said his father; "you begin to understand something about them, and to be on your guard against them. But you have only made a beginning."

"Only a beginning?" said Rollo; "why, I thought I had learned to work pretty well."

"So you have, for a little boy; but it is only a beginning, after all. I don't think you would succeed in persevering steadily, so as to accomplish any serious undertaking now."

"Why, father, _I_ think I should."

"Suppose I should give you the Latin grammar to learn in three months, and tell you that, at the end of that time, I would hear you recite it all at once. Do you suppose you should be ready?"

"Why, father, that is not _work_."

"Yes," said his father, "that is one kind of work,--and just such a kind of work, so far as patience, steadiness, and perseverance, are needed, as you will have most to do, in future years. But if I were to give it to you to do, and then say nothing to you about it till you had time to have learned the whole, I have some doubts whether you would recite a tenth part of it."

Rollo was silent; he knew it would be just so.

"No, my little son," said his father, putting him down and patting his head, "you have got a great deal to learn before you become a man; but then you have got some years to learn it in; that is a comfort. But now it is time for you to go to bed; so good night."

THE APPLE-GATHERING.

The Garden-House.

There was a certain building on one side of Farmer Cropwell's yard which they called the _garden-house_. There was one large double door which opened from it into the garden, and another smaller one which led to the yard towards the house. On one side of this room were a great many different kinds of garden-tools, such as hoes, rakes, shovels, and spades; there were one or two wheelbarrows, and little wagons. Over these were two or three broad shelves, with baskets, and bundles of matting, and ropes, and chains, and various iron tools. Around the wall, in different places, various things were hung up--here a row of augers, there a trap, and in other places parts of harness.

Opposite to these, there was a large bench, which extended along the whole side. At one end of this bench there were a great many carpenter's tools; and the other was covered with papers of seeds, and little bundles of dried plants, which Farmer Cropwell had just been getting in from the garden.

The farmer and one of his boys was at work here, arranging his seeds, and doing up his bundles, one pleasant morning in the fall, when a boy about twelve years old came running to the door of the garden-house, from the yard, playing with a large dog. The dog ran behind him, jumping up upon him; and when they got to the door, the boy ran in quick, laughing, and shut the door suddenly, so that the dog could not come in after him. This boy's name was George: the dog's name was Nappy--that is, they always called him Nappy. His true name was Napoleon; though James always thought that he got his name from the long naps he used to take in a certain sunny corner of the yard.

But, as I said before, George got into the garden-house, and shut Nappy out. He stood there holding the door, and said,