“As you will, beloved one,” said his father sombrely. After the meal, when the boy had removed the breakfast things from the table, had cleansed them and laid them by, he sat down to read the newspaper, full of an excited curiosity. As he did so a kind of proud bewilderment came over him that his own personal initiative had brought a thing of such mysterious import into the little room. He began to read the newspaper at the first word of the first page, at the top corner of the left hand. He read slowly and carefully every word the page contained. He then turned to the next, and continued to go word by word through each one of the twelve pages. When he had finished, he found to his consternation that he had not been able to draw a single ray of meaning out of all that vast assemblage of words. After a period of reflection, in which he refrained zealously from mentioning the subject to his father, he proceeded very carefully to read it again. His failure to understand it proved just as lamentable. In his chagrin and dismay he read it a third time, and a fourth; he committed portions of it by heart; he committed other portions to paper. In the evening he said to his father, with a blank face, “Why, my father, dost thou know that I have not the strength of understanding to comprehend a phrase of what is written in the newspaper!” His father smiled in his secret manner. “Can it be, Achilles,” he said, “that here is a bow that you cannot bend?” “My mind is as grass, my father, before the words in this newspaper,” said the boy woefully. “I am fifteen years old to-day; I have been able to gather the inmost meanings of some of the authors I have read, and even in diverse tongues, my father, from that which is spoken by you and me. For what reason is it that I do not gather that which is written in the newspapers the street-persons are always reading as they walk the streets of the great city?” “Is it not, beloved one,” said his father, “that these newspapers are composed in the strange tongues of those curious beings who walk the streets of the great city?” “You would say, my father,” said the boy, “that only street-persons can comprehend that which is written in these newspapers of theirs?” “At least, beloved one,” said his father, “to comprehend their newspapers we must become familiar with their language, their nature, and their ideas.” “How I wish,” cried the boy, “that I had never purchased a newspaper! How I wish I had never dared to bring it into this little room of ours!” With a curious repugnance in his face, the boy rent the newspaper in the middle.