_Charles._ Oh! as to that, he helps me sometimes, when I get stuck; he is always good-natured enough about that; but what I mean is, if I ask him to look at anything funny, or want to talk to him about any of our plays, a minute, he says I disturb him, and take off his attention; and if I go on, just to fidget him a little, he takes up his books and marches off somewhere else. _Mother._ He complains that you take off his attention, does he? _Charles._ Yes, mother; is not that cross in him? _Mother._ Richard has learned a very important secret, I see. _Charles._ A secret? What? one that helps him get his lessons? _Mother._ Yes. _Charles._ I wish poor _I_ could find it out. _Mother._ I can tell it to you in one word which you used just now. It is as good as “Open Sesame” in the play of the Forty Thieves which you read the other day. _Charles._ What can it be? _Mother._ Attention--Charles--attention! that will open the door of your mind and let the lesson in. _Charles._ Oh dear! I wish bawling the word out aloud would answer the purpose. _Mother._ I cannot say that it will, so my comparison is not a good one; but I wished to fix your _attention_, so I referred to something that had amused you. But, in good earnest, Charles, the only reason why Richard learns quicker than you do is, that he never allows himself to think of anything else while he is getting his lesson. You speak of yourself as studying as long as you are holding the book in your hand, though in fact you are not studying one quarter of the time. What is studying, Charles? _Charles._ Trying to fix something in my mind. _Mother._ Very good; a better answer than I expected. Now, were you trying to fix your lesson in your mind while you were watching Jerry? or while you were scratching with your pencil on that window-seat? or whistling to my canary bird? _Charles._ No, indeed. _Mother._ Yet during the three quarters of an hour you have sat at the window, with a book in your hand, these have been your principal employments. Once or twice you began to read the lesson over to yourself, but something would draw off your _attention_ in the midst; your thoughts were gone from it in an instant; the slight impression it had made was effaced; and when you returned to your task, you were just where you had been ten minutes before. Yet at nine o’clock you would jump up in dismay, exclaiming, “There, I have been studying this plaguy lesson more than an hour, and I can’t say it yet. Is it not enough to discourage a body, mother?” _Charles_, (_laughing._) That’s just my whine, mother; but the plain truth of the matter is, I do get discouraged. I don’t see any use in working so hard. _Mother._ But you would not have to work so hard--or at least not near so long, if you would go to work in the right way.