12. The father then directed his oldest son to untie the bundle, and to break each stick separately. As soon as the bundle was untied, each of the sons took the sticks separately, and found that they could easily break every one of them, and scatter them, in small pieces, all about the floor. 13. "Now," said the father, "I wish you, my dear sons, to learn a lesson from these sticks. So long as you are all united in love and friendship, you need fear little from any enemies; but, if you quarrel among yourselves, and do not keep together, you see by these little sticks how easily your enemies may put you down separately." 14. Now, this was a very wise father, and he taught his sons a very useful lesson with this bundle of sticks. I also wish to teach you, my little friend, whoever you are, that are reading this book, another useful lesson from the same story. 15. Hard words, especially long ones, will be difficult to you to read, unless, like the sons in the story, you untie the bundle; that is, until you take the long words apart, and read one part or syllable at a time. Thus you may learn what is meant by that wise saying, "_Divide and conquer_." LESSON III. _The same subject, continued._ 1. I have another lesson to teach you from the same story of the old man and the bundle of sticks, which I think will be very useful to you, and will make your lessons very much easier to you. 2. Whenever you have a lesson to learn, do not look at it all at once, and say, I cannot learn this long lesson; but divide it into small parts, and say to yourself, I will try to learn this first little part, and after I have learned that, I will rest two or three minutes, and then I will learn another little part, and then rest again a few minutes, and then I will learn another. 3. I think that in this way you will find study is not so hard a thing as it seemed to you at first, and you will have another explanation of that wise saying, _Divide and conquer_. 4. I will now tell you another story that I read when I was a little boy. It was called a fable. But before I tell you the story, I must tell you what a fable is. 5. A fable is a story which is not true. But, although it is not a true story, it is a very useful one, because it always teaches us a good lesson. 6. In many fables, birds and beasts are represented as speaking. Now, you know that birds and beasts cannot talk, and therefore the story, or fable, which tells us that birds and beasts, and other things, that are not alive, do talk, cannot be true. 7. But I have told you, that although fables are not true stories, they are very useful to us, because they teach us a useful lesson. This lesson that they teach is called the _moral_ of the fable; and that is always the best fable that has the best moral to it, or, in other words, that teaches us the best lesson.