You look at me quite aghast! Oh, ungrateful child, not to know your
dearest friend! As a punishment, I shall not tell you who he is to-day.
I will give you till to-morrow to think about it.

Meanwhile, as I have a little time left, I will say one word more about
what we are going to look at together. It would hardly be worth while
to tell you this pretty story which we have begun, if from time to
time we were not to extract a moral from it. And what is the moral of
our history to-day?

It has more than one.

In the first place it teaches you, if you never knew it before, that
you are under great obligations to other people, indeed to almost
everybody, and most of all perhaps to people whom you may be tempted
to look down upon. This laborer, with his coarse smock-frock and heavy
shoes, whom you are so ready to ridicule, is the very person who, with
his rough hand, has been the means of procuring for you half the good
things you eat. That workman, with turned-up sleeves, whose dirty black
fingers you are afraid of touching, has very likely blackened and
dirtied them in your service. You owe great respect to all these people,
I assure you, for they all work for you. Do not, then, go and fancy
yourself of great consequence among them--you who are of no use in any
way at present, who want everybody's help yourself, but as yet can
help nobody.

Not that I mean to reproach you by saying this. Your turn has not come
yet, and everybody began like you originally. But I do wish to impress
upon you that you must prepare yourself to become some day useful to
others, so that you may pay back the debts which you are now