ort out the _nails_, and I expect, by your coming to me
for such frivolous reasons, that you are not going on with it very well."

Rollo went slowly out of the room, and sauntered along back to his work.
He put the screws aside, and went on with the nails, but he did very
little. When the heart is not in the work, it always goes on very slowly.

Thus an hour or two of the forenoon passed away, and Rollo made very
little progress. At last his father came out to see what he had done; and
it was very plain that he had been idling away his time, and had
accomplished very little indeed.

His father then said that he might leave his work and come in. Rollo
walked along by the side of his father, and he said to him--

"I see, Rollo, that I shall not succeed in teaching you to work
industriously, without something more than kind words."

Rollo knew not what to say, and so he was silent. He felt guilty and
ashamed.

"I gave you work to do which was very easy and plain, but you have been
leaving it repeatedly for frivolous reasons; and even while you were over
your work, you have not been industrious. Thus you have wasted your
morning entirely; you have neither done work nor enjoyed play.

"I was afraid it would be so," he continued. "Very few boys can be taught
to work industriously, without being compelled; though I hoped that my
little Rollo could have been. But as it is, as I find that persuasion will
not do, I must do something more decided. I should do very wrong to let
you grow up an idle boy; and it is time for you to begin to learn to do
something besides play."

He said this in a kind, but very serious tone, and it was plain he was
much displeased. He told Rollo, a minute or two after, that he might go,
then, where he pleased, and that he would consider what he should do, and
tell him some other time.

A Conversation.

That evening, when Rollo was just going to bed, his father took him up in
his lap, and told him he had concluded what to do.

"You see it is very necessary," said he, "that you should have the power
of confining yourself steadily and patiently to a single employment, even
if it does not amuse you. _I_ have to do that, and all people have to do
it, and you must learn to do it, or you will grow up indolent and useless.
You cannot do it now, it is very plain. If I set you to doing any thing,
you go on as long as the novelty and the amusement last, and then your
patience is gone, and you c