"You rascal!" says father, at sight of the damage. "I send you to
mind the ducks and you amuse yourself picking up stones, as though
there weren't enough of them all round the house! Make haste and
throw them away!"

Broken hearted, I obey. Diamonds, gold dust, petrified ram's horn,
heavenly beetle are all flung on a rubbish heap outside the door.

Mother bewails her lot: "A nice thing, bringing up children to see
them turn out so badly! You'll bring me to my grave. Green stuff I
don't mind: it does for the rabbits. But stones, which ruin your
pockets; poisonous animals, which'll sting your hand: what good are
they to you, silly? There's no doubt about it: some one has thrown
a spell over you!"

Yes, my poor mother, you were right, in your simplicity: a spell
had been cast upon me; I admit it today. When it is hard enough to
earn one's bit of bread, does not improving one's mind but render
one more meet for suffering? Of what avail is the torment of
learning to the derelicts of life?

A deal better off am I, at this late hour, dogged by poverty and
knowing that the diamonds of the duck pool were rock crystal, the
gold dust mica, the stone horn an Ammonite and the sky-blue beetle
a Hoplia! We poor men would do better to mistrust the joys of
knowledge: let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace,
flee the temptations of the pond, mind our ducks and leave to
others, more favored by fortune, the job of explaining the world's
mechanism, if the spirit moves them.