bodkin, fixed it in the middle, tied the two ends, and carried the bag
to his mother, who pronounced it nearly as well made as if she had done
it herself.

At school he found it more and more plain what a good thing it is that
we haven't to find out every thing for ourselves from the beginning;
that people gather into books what they and all who went before them
have learned, so that we come into their property, as it were; and,
after being taught of them, have only to begin our discoveries from
where they leave off. In geography, for instance, what a number of
voyages and journeys have had to be made, and books to record them
written; then what a number of these books to be read, and the facts
gathered out of them, before a single map could be drawn, not to say a
geography book printed! Whereas now he could learn a multitude of things
about the various countries, their peoples and animals and plants, their
mountains and rivers and lakes and cities, without having set his foot
beyond the parish in which he was born. And so with everything else
after its kind. But it is more of what Willie learned to do than what he
learned to know that I have to treat.

When he went to school, his father made him a present of a pocket-knife.
He had had one before, but not a very good one; and this, having three
blades, all very sharp, he found a wonderful treasure of recourse. His
father also bought him a nice new slate.

Now there was another handy boy at school, a couple of years older than
Willie, whose father was a carpenter. He had cut on the frame of
his slate, not his initials only, but his whole name and
address,--_Alexander Spelman, Priory Leas_. Willie thought how nice it
would be with his new knife also to cut his name on his slate; only