﻿LITTLE FRANK AND THE BOAT. 165 



noblest examples of how much self-cultivation may do to make a 

 great man. His school privileges were of the most ordinary kind. 

 Early in life he was apprenticed to a shoemaker; and instead of join- 

 ing in the vulgar conversation so common to many of his compan- 

 ions, he would sit at his work with an open book before him, and 

 devote every moment to study that his eyes could be spared from 

 the occupation in which he was engaged. 



Be saving of your little allowances, and buy books. Lives of 

 good and great men. Men such as Washington, and Penn, and 

 Howard, and a host of others, whose virtues, \vhich you must try to 

 imitate, have rendered their names immortal. 



Cultivate a taste for reading. The field of interest and instruc- 

 tion is boundless, to which it will lead you. 



Little Frank and the Boat. 



ONE summer morning, as little Frank Merrill lay in his bed, fast 

 asleep, he dreamed that he was in the top of a high tree, and that 

 the wind kept shaking him up and down, and that at last it began 

 to rain, and the great drops came spattering in his face. This 

 annoyed him so much that he opened his eyes, and found his 

 mother, after trying in vain to awaken him by shaking, was drop- 

 ping water in his face from a tumbler, which she held in her hand. 



" Ah, you little sleepy-head ! " said she, laughingly, " here I have 

 been trying for a quarter of an hour to make you wake up, for your 

 father and I are going out in the new boat, to get some pond-lilies, 

 and if you like, you may go with us." 



Frank jumped up and dressed himself as quickly as possible, for 

 he had never been out in the new boat, although, in the week which 

 had elapsed since it was brought home, he had many times wished 

 to go. As soon as he was dressed, therefore, he ran down stairs, 

 arid scarcely waiting to eat any breakfast, seized his hat, and off he 

 went to the boat. But when there he could do nothing until his 

 father came with the key, for the boat was fastened to a tree by a 

 chain and padlock. So the little boy sat down under the great 

 trees, and watched the little blue waves as they came rolling up 

 over the clean white sand, until they almost touched his feet. Frank 



