"Yes, and how long do you think you could find happiness, in calling beautiful gardens into existence, one after another?" "O, I don't know;--a good while." "A day?" "O, yes, father." "A week?" "Why, perhaps, I should be tired in a week." "Then all your power of receiving enjoyment from gardens would be run out and exhausted in a week; whereas mine, without any Aladdin's lamp, lasts me year after year, pleasantly increasing all the time without ever reaching satiety." "What is satiety, father?" "The feeling we experience when we have had so much of a good thing that we are completely tired and sick of it. If I should give a little child as much honey as he could eat, or let him play all the time, or buy him a vast collection of pictures, he would soon get tired of these things." "O father, I never should get tired of looking at pictures." "I think you would," said his father. Here the conversation stopped a few minutes, while Rollo went to wheel away a load of his sticks. Before he returned, he had prepared himself to renew his argument. He said, "Father, even if I did get tired of making beautiful gardens, I could then do something else with the lamp, and that would give me new pleasure." "Yes, but the new pleasure would be run out and exhausted just as soon as the pleasure of having a garden would have been; so that you would, in a short time, be satiated with every thing, and become completely wretched and miserable." "But, father," said Rollo, after being silent a little while, "I don't think I should get tired of my beautiful gardens very soon: I don't think I should get tired even of looking at pictures of them." "Should you like to try the experiment?" "Yes, sir," said Rollo, very eagerly. Rollo's father had a great many books of pictures and engravings of various kinds in his library; and sometimes he used to allow the children to see them, but only a very few at a time. They had not yet seen them all. He only allowed them to see them as fast as they had time to examine them thoroughly, and read about them and understand them. But now he said to Rollo, "I could let you have all the books of prints and engravings I have got, and see them all at one time, and that would be giving you Aladdin's lamp, exactly, so far as my pictures are concerned." "Well," said Rollo, clapping his hands. "But then, in a short time, you would get tired of looking at them; you would become satiated, and would in fact spoil the whole pleasure by attempting to enjoy it too fast. But then I think it would perhaps do you good." "How, father?" "Why, by teaching you the value of moderation, and the uselessness of Aladdin's lamps in all human enjoyments. It would be a very valuable experiment in intellectual philosophy, which I think it very probable might be of use to you. So, if you please, you may try it." "Well, father, I am sure I should like to see the pictures." "That is all settled then," said his father; "some day you shall."