_Address of the Author to the Pupil,--continued from Lesson 3d._


1. The fable of the old clock, which has just been read, is intended to
teach us a lesson, or moral, and that is, that whenever we have anything
to do, whether it be a long lesson or a piece of hard work, we must not
think of it all at once, but divide the labor, and thus conquer the
difficulty.

2. The pendulum was discouraged when it thought that it had to tick
eighty-six thousand four hundred times in twenty-four hours; but when
the dial asked it to tick half a dozen times only, the pendulum
confessed that it was not fatiguing or disagreeable to do so.

3. It was only by thinking what a large number of times it had to tick
in twenty-four hours, that it became fatigued.

4. Now, suppose that a little boy, or a little girl, has a hard lesson
to learn, and, instead of sitting down quietly and trying to learn a
little of it at a time, and after that a little more, until it is all
learned, should begin to cry, and say I cannot learn all of this lesson,
it is too long, or too hard, and I never can get it, that little boy, or
girl, would act just as the pendulum did when it complained of the hard
work it had to do.

5. But the teacher says to the little boy, Come, my dear, read over the
first sentence of your lesson to me six times. The little boy reads the
first sentence six times, and confesses to his teacher that it was not
very hard work to do so.