prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most
serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills
which his father paid for it.

At the end of the very first lesson George Morley saw that all the
elocution masters to whose skill he had been consigned were blunderers in
comparison with the basketmaker.

Waife did not puzzle him with scientific theories. All that the great
comedian required of him was to observe and to imitate. Observation,
imitation, lo! the groundwork of all art! the primal elements of all
genius! Not there, indeed to halt, but there ever to commence. What
remains to carry on the intellect to mastery? Two steps,--to reflect,
to reproduce. Observation, imitation, reflection, reproduction. In
these stands a mind complete and consummate, fit to cope with all labour,
achieve all success.

At the end of the first lesson George Morley felt that his cure was
possible. Making an appointment for the next day at the same place, he
came thither stealthily and so on day by day. At the end of a week he
felt that the cure was nearly certain; at the end of a month the cure was
self-evident. He should live to preach the Word. True, that he
practised incessantly in private. Not a moment in his waking hours that
the one thought, one object, was absent from his mind! True, that with
all his patience, all his toil, the obstacle was yet serious, might never
be entirely overcome. Nervous hurry, rapidity of action, vehemence of
feeling, brought back, might at unguarded moments always bring back, the
gasping breath, the emptied lungs, the struggling utterance. But the
relapse, rarer and rarer now with each trial, would be at last scarce a
drawback. "Nay," quoth Waife, "instead of a drawback, become but an