THE BOOSTER THAT CHANGED THE WEATHEE. 107 



sometimes make in regard to them. There are parents who 

 mean no wrong, and yet who make no scruple of deceiving 

 them in reply to their simple questionings, forgetting, or 

 regardless of the fact, that a false answer to their innocent 

 inquiries put hi good faith, and in the earnest pursuit of truth, 

 may plant an error in their minds, which may take years of 

 experience, and often a painful amount of ridicule to eradicate. 

 I knew a little boy years ago, a thoughtful, philosophic child, 

 who speculated in his simplicity upon what he saw, as great 

 philosophers do, in their wisdom, upon the various phenomena 

 of Nature. His father, had a great barn, above which, as 

 was the fashion long ago, perched upon a staff, a few feet 

 above the ridgepole, was a weather-cock, fashioned out of 

 a piece of board in the shape of a rooster. ' Father,' said 

 the little boy, one day, 'what makes that rooster always 

 point his head one way when the cold wind blows, and the 

 other way when it is warm and pleasant ?' ' He always 

 looks towards the place where the wind comes from,' replied 

 the father ; ' when he gets too warm, and the sun is too hot 

 for him, he turns his tail to the south, and the north wind is 

 sure to come down, cold and chill, to cool him off.' ' Does 

 he call the cold wind, father, and will it come when he. looks 

 that way ?' was the next inquiry. ' Certainly,' replied his 

 father, carelessly. That was a wrong and a foolish an- 

 swer. 



That little boy, relying in his simple faith upon the wis- 

 dom and truthfulness of his father, believed for a long tune, 

 that the weathercock on the top of the barn, couM bring 



