Rollo at Work Part 5

Rollo went slowly out of the room, and sauntered along back to his work.

He put the screws aside, and went on with the nails, but he did very little. When the heart is not in the work, it always goes on very slowly.

Thus an hour or two of the forenoon pa.s.sed away, and Rollo made very little progress. At last his father came out to see what he had done; and it was very plain that he had been idling away his time, and had accomplished very little indeed.

His father then said that he might leave his work and come in. Rollo walked along by the side of his father, and he said to him--

"I see, Rollo, that I shall not succeed in teaching you to work industriously, without something more than kind words."

Rollo knew not what to say, and so he was silent. He felt guilty and ashamed.

"I gave you work to do which was very easy and plain, but you have been leaving it repeatedly for frivolous reasons; and even while you were over your work, you have not been industrious. Thus you have wasted your morning entirely; you have neither done work nor enjoyed play.

"I was afraid it would be so," he continued. "Very few boys can be taught to work industriously, without being compelled; though I hoped that my little Rollo could have been. But as it is, as I find that persuasion will not do, I must do something more decided. I should do very wrong to let you grow up an idle boy; and it is time for you to begin to learn to do something besides play."

He said this in a kind, but very serious tone, and it was plain he was much displeased. He told Rollo, a minute or two after, that he might go, then, where he pleased, and that he would consider what he should do, and tell him some other time.

A Conversation.

That evening, when Rollo was just going to bed, his father took him up in his lap, and told him he had concluded what to do.

"You see it is very necessary," said he, "that you should have the power of confining yourself steadily and patiently to a single employment, even if it does not amuse you. _I_ have to do that, and all people have to do it, and you must learn to do it, or you will grow up indolent and useless.

You cannot do it now, it is very plain. If I set you to doing any thing, you go on as long as the novelty and the amus.e.m.e.nt last, and then your patience is gone, and you contrive every possible excuse for getting away from your task. Now, I am going to give you one hour's work to do, every forenoon and afternoon. I shall give you such things to do, as are perfectly plain and easy, so that you will have no excuse for neglecting your work or leaving it. But yet I shall choose such things as will afford you no amus.e.m.e.nt; for I want you to learn to _work_, not play."

"But, father," said Rollo, "you told me there was pleasure in work, the other day. But how can there be any pleasure in it, if you choose such things as have no amus.e.m.e.nt in them, at all?"

"The pleasure of working," said his father, "is not the fun of doing amusing things, but the satisfaction and solid happiness of being faithful in duty, and accomplis.h.i.+ng some useful purpose. For example, if I were to lose my pocket-book on the road, and should tell you to walk back a mile, and look carefully all the way until you found it, and if you did it faithfully and carefully, you would find a kind of satisfaction in doing it; and when you found the pocket-book, and brought it back to me, you would enjoy a high degree of happiness. Should not you?"

"Why, yes, sir, I should," said Rollo.

"And yet there would be no _amus.e.m.e.nt_ in it. You might, perhaps, the next day, go over the same road, catching b.u.t.terflies: that would be amus.e.m.e.nt.

Now, the pleasure you would enjoy in looking for the pocket-book, would be the solid satisfaction of useful work. The pleasure of catching b.u.t.terflies would be the amus.e.m.e.nt of play. Now, the difficulty is, with you, that you have scarcely any idea, yet, of the first. You are all the time looking for the other, that is, the amus.e.m.e.nt. You begin to work when I give you any thing to do, but if you do not find _amus.e.m.e.nt_ in it, you soon give it up. But if you would only persevere, you would find, at length, a solid satisfaction, that would be worth a great deal more."

Rollo sat still, and listened, but his father saw, from his looks, that he was not much interested in what he was saying; and he perceived that it was not at all probable that so small a boy could be _reasoned_ into liking work. In fact, it was rather hard for Rollo to understand all that his father said,--and still harder for him to feel the force of it. He began to grow sleepy, and so his father let him go to bed.

Rollo Learns to Work at Last.

The next day his father gave him his work. He was to begin at ten o'clock, and work till eleven, gathering beans in the garden. His father went out with him, and waited to see how long it took him to gather half a pint, and then calculated how many he could gather in an hour, if he was industrious. Rollo knew that if he failed now, he should be punished in some way, although his father did not say any thing about punishment. When he was set at work the day before, about the nails, he was making an experiment, as it were, and he did not expect to be actually punished if he failed; but now he knew that he was under orders, and must obey.

So he worked very diligently, and when his father came out at the end of the hour, he found that Rollo had got rather more beans than he had expected. Rollo was much gratified to see his father pleased; and he carried in his large basket full of beans to show his mother, with great pleasure. Then he went to play, and enjoyed himself very highly.

The next morning, his father said to him,

"Well, Rollo, you did very well yesterday; but doing right once is a very different thing from forming a habit of doing right. I can hardly expect you will succeed as well to-day; or, if you should to-day, that you will to-morrow."

Rollo thought he should. His work was to pick up all the loose stones in the road, and carry them, in a basket, to a great heap of stones behind the barn. But he was not quite faithful. His father observed him playing several times. He did not speak to him, however, until the hour was over, and then he called him in.

"Rollo," said he, "you have failed to-day. You have not been very idle, but have not been industrious; and the punishment which I have concluded to try first, is, to give you only bread and water for dinner."

So, when dinner time came, and the family sat down to the good beefsteak and apple-pie which was upon the table, Rollo knew that he was not to come. He felt very unhappy, but he did not cry. His father called him, and cut off a good slice of bread, and put into his hands, and told him he might go and eat it on the steps of the back door. "If you should be thirsty," he added, "you may ask Mary to give you some water."

Rollo took the bread, and went out, and took his solitary seat on the stone step leading into the back yard, and, in spite of all his efforts to prevent it, the tears would come into his eyes. He thought of his guilt in disobeying his father, and he felt unhappy to think that his father and mother were seated together at their pleasant table, and that he could not come because he had been an undutiful son. He determined that he would never be unfaithful in his work again.

He went on, after this, several days, very well. His father gave him various kinds of work to do, and he began at last to find a considerable degree of satisfaction in doing it. He found, particularly, that he enjoyed himself a great deal more after his work than before, and whenever he saw what he had done, it gave him pleasure. After he had picked up the loose stones before the house, for instance, he drove his hoop about there, with unusual satisfaction; enjoying the neat and tidy appearance of the road much more than he would have done if Jonas had cleared it. In fact, in the course of a month, Rollo became quite a faithful and efficient little workman.

The Corporal's Again.

"Now," said his father to him one day, after he had been doing a fine job of wood-piling,--"now we will go and talk with the corporal about a wheelbarrow. Or do you think you could find the way yourself?"

Rollo said he thought he could.

"Very well, you may go; I believe I shall let you have a wheelbarrow now, and you can ask him how soon he can have it done."

Rollo clapped his hands, and capered about, and asked his father how long he thought it would be before he could have it.

"O, you will learn," said he, "when you come to talk with the corporal."

"Do you think it will be a week?"

"I think it probable that he could make one in less than a week," said his father, smiling.

"Well, how soon?" said Rollo.

"O, I cannot tell you: wait till you get to his shop, and then you will see."

Rollo saw that, for some reason or other, his father was not inclined to talk about the time when he should have his wheelbarrow, but he could not think why; however, he determined to get the corporal to make it as quick as he could, at any rate.

It was about the middle of the afternoon that Rollo set off to go for his wheelbarrow. His mother told him he might go and get his cousin James to go with him if he chose. So he walked along towards the bridge, and, instead of turning at once off there to go towards the mill, he went on over the bridge towards the house where James lived. James came with him, and they walked back very pleasantly together.

When they got back across the bridge again, they turned off towards the mill, talking about the wheelbarrow. Rollo told James about his learning to work, and about his having seen the wheelbarrow at the corporal's, and how he trundled it about, and liked it very much.

"I should like to see it very much," said James. "I suppose I can, when we get to the corporal's shop."

"No," said Rollo, "he said that that wheelbarrow was engaged; and I suppose it has been taken away before this time."

Just then the corner of the corporal's shop began to corner into view, and presently the door came in sight, and James called out,

"Yes, yes, there it is. I see it standing up by the side of the door."