I think, or rather my father thinks, that their father used to dream
that one of these boys would grow to be President, and that the other
would be a member of Congress, at any rate. But while his younger son
grew to be a good student, the other one was a good, honest, industrious,
and intelligent boy, who did not much like books. His father intended to
make him a lawyer, and he got on well enough in Arithmetic and Geography,
but Grammar came hard, and when he got into Latin he blundered
dreadfully. He studied to please his parents, and from a sense of duty,
but it mortified him greatly to think that he could not succeed as the
other boys did. For you know it is hard to succeed at anything unless
your heart is in it. And so one night he sat down and cried to think he
must always be a dolt. His mother found him weeping and tried to comfort
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.
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