I think you will find something worth looking at in the budget--not pearls, or pieces of coral, or lost treasures, exactly, but still something which will please you, and something which, when you get hold of it, will be worth keeping and laying up in some snug corner of your memory box. I say _when you get hold of it_; for the valuable things I have for you do not all lie on the surface. You will have to _search_ for them a little. That is, you will have to think. When you have read one of my stories, or fables, you may find it necessary to stop, and ask yourself "What does Uncle Frank mean by all this?" In other words, you will have to use the diving bell, and see if you can't hunt up something in the story or the fable, which will be useful to you, and which will make you wiser and better. Now you see why I have called my book _The Diving Bell_, don't you? II. THINKING AND LAUGHING. It is Uncle Frank's notion, that it is a good thing to laugh, but a better thing to think. A great many people, however, old as well as young, and young as well as old, live and die without thinking much. They lose three quarters of the benefit they ought to get from reading, and from what they see and learn as they go through the world, by never diving below the surface of things. I don't suppose it is so with you. I hope not, at all events. If it is so, then you had better shut up this book, and pass it over to some young friend of yours, who has learned to think, and who loves to read books that will help him about thinking. No, on the whole, you needn't do any such thing. Just read the book--read it through. Perhaps you will get a taste for such reading, while you are going through the book. I must tell you an anecdote just here. You will not refuse to read that, at any rate. Not long ago I was in a book store, looking over some new books which I saw on the counter, when a fine-looking boy, who appeared to be about nine years old, came in. He had a shilling in his hand, and said he wanted to buy a book. "But what book do you want?" one of the clerks asked. The boy could not tell what it was exactly. But it was a "funny book"--he was sure of that--and it cost a shilling. Well, it finally turned out that the book which the little fellow wanted was a comic almanac--a book filled with miserable pictures--pictures of men and beasts twisted into all sorts of odd shapes--and vulgar jokes, and scraps of low wit. "Will you let me look at it?" I asked the little boy as the clerk handed the book to him. "Yes, sir," said he. I took the almanac, and turned over some of its leaves. There was not a particle of information in the book, except what related to the sun, and moon, and stars, and that formed but a small portion of the volume. "My son," said I, pleasantly, "what do you buy this book for?" "To make me laugh," said he. "But is _that_ all you read books for--to find something to laugh at?" I inquired.