ld win himself distinguished honors.

"See here," he said; "Mr. Sewell told me I might go as far as I liked,
and I mean to take all the declensions to begin with; there's five of
'em, and I shall learn them for the first lesson; then I shall take the
adjectives next, and next the verbs, and so in a fortnight get into
reading."

Mara heaved a sort of sigh. She wished she had been invited to share
this glorious race; but she looked on admiring when Moses read, in a
loud voice, "Penna, pennae, pennae, pennam," etc.

"There now, I believe I've got it," he said, handing Mara the book; and
he was perfectly astonished to find that, with the book withdrawn, he
boggled, and blundered, and stumbled ingloriously. In vain Mara softly
prompted, and looked at him with pitiful eyes as he grew red in the face
with his efforts to remember.

"Confound it all!" he said, with an angry flush, snatching back the
book; "it's more trouble than it's worth."

Again he began the repetition, saying it very loud and plain; he said it
over and over till his mind wandered far out to sea, and while his
tongue repeated "penna, pennae," he was counting the white sails of the
fishing-smacks, and thinking of pulling up codfish at the Banks.

"There now, Mara, try me," he said, and handed her the book again; "I'm
sure I _must_ know it now."

But, alas! with the book the sounds glided away; and "penna" and
"pennam" and "pennis" and "pennae" were confusedly and indiscriminately
mingled. He thought it must be Mara's fault; she didn't read right, or
she told him just as he was going to say it, or she didn't tell him
right; or was he a fool? or had he lost his senses?

That first declension has been a valley of humiliation to many a sturdy
boy--to many a bright one, too; and often it is, that the more full of
thought and vigor the mind is, the more difficult it is to narrow it
down to the single dry issue of learning those sounds. Heinrich Heine
said the Romans would never have found time to conquer the world, if
they had had to learn their own language; but that, luckily for them,
they were born into the knowledge of what nouns form their accusatives
in "um."

Long before Moses had learned the first declension, Mara knew it by
heart; for her intense anxiety for him, and the eagerness and zeal with
which she listened for each termination, fixed them in her mind.
Besides, she was naturally of a more quiet and scholar-like turn than
he,--more intellect