hy it would be hard to say! This bay was
the gift of a poor man; and the presents of the poor are somehow sweeter
perhaps than any others.

Roger is off. He has ridden far. The flowers of the carpet are the
blossoms of the tropical forest. Good luck to you, little Roger! May
your hobby-horse carry you happily through the world! May you never have
a more dangerous mount! Small and great, we all ride ours! Which of us
has not his hobby?

Men's hobbies gallop like mad things along the roads of life; one is
chasing glory, another pleasure; many leap over precipices and break
their rider's neck. I wish you luck, little Roger, and I hope, when
you are a man, you will bestride two hobbies that will always carry you
along the right road; one is spirited, the other gentle-tempered; they
are both noble steeds; one is called Courage and the other Kindness.

COURAGE

[Illustration: 192]

LOUISON and Frederic are off to school along the village street. The
sun shines gaily and the two children are singing. They sing like the
nightingale, because their hearts are light like his. They sing an old
song their grandmothers sang when they were little girls, a song their
children's children will sing one day; for songs are tender flowers that
never die, they fly from lip to lip down the ages. The lips fade and
fall silent one after the other, but the song lives on for ever. There
are songs come down to us from the days when the men were shepherds
and all the women shepherdesses. That is the reason why they speak of
nothing but sheep and wolves.

Louison and Frederic sing; their mouths are as round as a flower and the
song rises shrill and thin and clear in the morning air.

But listen! suddenly the notes stick in Frederic's throat.

What unseen power is it has strangled the music on the boy's lips? It is
fear. Every day, as sure as fate, he comes upon the butcher's dog at the
end of the village street, and every day his heart seems to stop and his
legs begin to shake at the sight. Yet the butcher's dog does not fly at
him, or even threaten to. He sits peaceably at his master's shop-door.
But he is black, and he has a staring bloodshot eye and shows a row of
sharp white teeth. He looks frightful. And then he squats there in the
middle of bits of meat and offal and all sorts of horrors--which makes
him more terrifying still. Of course it is n't his fault, but he is
the presiding genius. Yes, a savage brute, the butcher's dog!