e with Euclid."

"Work! what are you doing, that you call work?"

"Well, hoeing beans, pulling up weeds, harvesting oats, with
recreations in Latin Grammar, Dabol, Algebra, Watts on the Mind,
Butler's Analogy, and other trifles."

"All at one time?"

"No, not more than three at the same time. Don't lecture me, Doctor, I
am incorrigible. When I work, I don't play."

"And when you don't play you work, occasionally; well, I think Euclid
will do you good."

"I won't take it as a prescription, Doctor!"

"A thorough course of mathematics would do more for one of your
flighty mind, than anything else; you want chaining down to the severe
logic of lines and angles."

"To the solution of such profound problems as, that the whole of a
thing is more than a fraction of it; and things that are exactly alike
resemble each other, for instance, eh?"

"Pshaw! you will make fun of everything. Will you ever reach
discretion, and deal with things seriously?"

"I was never more serious in my life, and could cry with mortification
over my lost, idled-away hours, you never believed in me, and are not
to blame for that, nor have I any promises to make. I am not thought
to be at all promising, I believe."

"Bart," said the Doctor, seriously, "you don't lack capacity; but you
are too quick and impulsive, and all imagination and fancy."

"Well, Doctor, you flatter me; but really is not the imagination one
of the highest elements of the human mind? In the wide world's history
was it not a crowning, and one of the most useful qualities of many of
the greatest men?"

"Great men have had imagination. I presume, and achieved great things
in spite of it; but through it, never."

"Why, Doctor! the mere mathematician is the most servile of mortals.
He is useful, but cannot create, or even discover. He weighs and
measures. Project one of his angles into space, and, though it may
reach within ten feet of a blazing star that dazzles men with eyes,
yet he will neither see nor know of its existence. His foot-rule won't
reach it, and he has no eyes. Imagination! it was the logic of the
gods--the power to create; and among men it abolishes the impossible.
By its force and strength one may strike fire from hidden flints in
darkened worlds, and beat new windows in the blind sides of the ages.
Columbus imagined another continent, and sailed to it; and so of all
great discoverers."

The Doctor listened with some surprise. "Did it ever occur to y