fort
him. She walked out in the dusky evening with him and talked. But poor
David, for that was his name, was broken-hearted. He had tried with all
his might to get interested in "Hic, haec, hoc," but it was of no use. He
said there was something lacking in his head. "And I'll never amount to
anything, never! Brother Joe gets his lesson in a few minutes, and I
can't get mine at all."

His mother did not know what to say. But she only said that there was
some use for everybody. She knew that David was not wanting in
intelligence. In practical affairs he showed more shrewdness than his
brother. But his father had set his heart on making him a scholar. That
very day the teacher had said to his father that it was no use.

"Your father," she said, "intends to take you from school, and it is a
great disappointment to him. But we know that you have done your best,
and you must not be disheartened. If you were lazy, we should feel a
great deal worse."

Just then they came to the orchard brook. Here she saw in the dim light
something moving in the water.

"What is that, David?" she said.

"That's my flutter-wheel, and I feel like breaking it to pieces."

"Why?"

"Well, you see, all the boys made little water-mills to be run by the
force of the stream. We call them 'flutter-wheels.' But I made one so
curious that it beat them all," he said.

"Show it to me, Davie," she said. And David explained it to her,
forgetting all about his unhappiness in the pleasure of showing the
little cog-wheels, and the under-shot wheel that drove it.

"And why did you want to break it up?" she asked.

"Because, mother, Sam Peters said that I should never be good for
anything but to make flutter-wheels, and it is true, I am afraid."

"If you were a poor man's son, Davie, you might be a good mechanic," said
his mother.

That night Davie resolved to be a mechanic. "I won't be a
good-for-nothing man in the world. If I can't be a learned professor, I
may be a good carpenter or a blacksmith. If I learn to make a good
horseshoe, I'll be worth something." So the next morning he asked his
father's leave to enter a machine-shop. His father said he might, and
with all the school-boys laughing at him, he took his tin-pail with his
lunch in it, and went into the shop each morning. And now he began to
love books, too. He gathered a library of works on mechanics. Everything
relating to machinery he studied. He took up mathematics and succeeded.
Afte