e test.

Likewise, there was the case of Hugh Idle and Mr. Toil. Perhaps you
recall that moving story? Hugh tries to dodge work; wherever he goes he
finds Mr. Toil in one guise or another but always with the same harsh
voice and the same frowning eyes, bossing some job in a manner which
would cost him his boss-ship right off the reel in these times when
union labor is so touchy. And what is the moral to be drawn from this
narrative? I know that all my life I have been trying to get away from
work, feeling that I was intended for leisure, though never finding
time somehow to take it up seriously. But what was the use of trying to
discourage me from this agreeable idea back yonder in the formulative
period of my earlier years?

In Harper's Fourth Reader, edition of 1888, I found an article entitled
The Difference Between the Plants and Animals. It takes up several pages
and includes some of the fanciest language the senior Mr. Harper could
disinter from the Unabridged. In my own case--and I think I was no more
observant than the average urchin of my age--I can scarcely remember
a time when I could not readily determine certain basic distinctions
between such plants and such animals as a child is likely to encounter
in the temperate parts of North America.

While emerging from infancy some of my contemporaries may have fallen
into the error of the little boy who came into the house with a haunted
look in his eye and asked his mother if mulberries had six legs apiece
and ran round in the dust of the road, and when she told him that such
was not the case with mulberries he said: "Then, mother, I feel that I
have made a mistake."

To the best of my recollection, I never made this mistake, or at least
if I did I am sure I made no inquiry afterward which might tend further
to increase my doubts; and in any event I am sure that by the time I
was old enough to stumble over Mr. Harper's favorite big words I was old
enough to tell the difference between an ordinary animal--say, a house
cat--and any one of the commoner forms of plant life, such as, for
example, the scaly-bark hickory tree, practically at a glance. I'll add
this too: Nick Carter never wasted any of the golden moments which
he and I spent together in elucidating for me the radical points of
difference between the plants and the animals.

In the range of poetry selected by the compilers of the readers for my
especial benefit as I progressed onward from the primary