ections.

"You must listen," said he, "and understand the directions now, for I
cannot tell you twice."

He then took a little wisp of straw, and brushed away a clean place upon
the barn floor, and then poured down the nails upon it.

"O, how many nails!" said Rollo.

His father then took up a handful of them, and showed Rollo that there
were several different sizes; and he placed them down upon the floor in
little heaps, each size by itself. Those that were crooked also he laid
away in a separate pile.

"Now, Rollo," said he, "I want you to go to work sorting these nails,
steadily and industriously, until they are all done. There are not more
than three or four kinds of nails, and you can do them pretty fast if you
work _steadily_, and do not get to playing with them. If you find any
pieces of iron, or any thing else that you do not know what to do with,
lay them aside, and go on with the nails. Do you understand it all?"

Rollo said he did, and so his father left him, and went into the house.
Rollo sat down upon the clean barn floor, and began his task.

"I don't think this is any great thing," said he; "I can do this easily
enough;" and he took up some of the nails, and began to arrange them as
his father had directed.

But Rollo did not perceive what the real difficulty in his task was. It
was, indeed, very easy to see what nails were large, and what were small,
and what were of middle size, and to put them in their proper heaps. There
was nothing very hard in that. The difficulty was, that, after having
sorted a few, it would become tedious and tiresome work, doing it there
all alone in the barn,--picking out old nails, with nobody to help him,
and nobody to talk to, and nothing to see, but those little heaps of rusty
iron on the floor.

This, I say, was the real trouble; and Rollo's father knew, when he set
his little boy about it, that he would soon get very tired of it, and, not
being accustomed to any thing but play, would not persevere.

And so it was. Rollo sorted out a few, and then he began to think that it
was rather tiresome to be there all alone; and he thought it would be a
good plan for him to go and ask his father to let him go and get his
cousin James to come and help him.

He accordingly laid down the nails he had in his hand, and went into the
house, and found his father writing at a table.

"What is the matter now?" said his father.

"Why, father," said Rollo, "I thought I should li