seemed obscure, and enforce what was profitable, in private talk, with
that stray lamb from another's fold.

Now I question much if all Dr. Riccabocca's maxims, though they were
often very moral and generally very wise, served to expand the peasant
boy's native good qualities, and correct his bad, half so well as the few
simple words, not at all indebted to Machiavelli, which Leonard had once
reverently listened to when he stood by Mark's elbow-chair, yielded up
for the moment to the good parson, worthy to sit in it; for Mr. Dale had
a heart in which all the fatherless of the parish found their place. Nor
was this loss of tender, intimate, spiritual lore so counterbalanced by
the greater facilities for purely intellectual instruction as modern
enlightenment might presume. For, without disputing the advantage of
knowledge in a general way, knowledge, in itself, is not friendly to
content. Its tendency, of course, is to increase the desires, to
dissatisfy us with what is, in order to urge progress to what may be; and
in that progress, what unnoticed martyrs among the many must fall baffled
and crushed by the way! To how large a number will be given desires they
will never realize, dissatisfaction of the lot from which they will never
rise! Allons! one is viewing the dark side of the question. It is all
the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny
Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and
seeing no one near him, groan out querulously,--"And am I born to dig a
potato ground?"

Pardieu, my friend Lenny, if you live to be seventy, and ride in your
carriage, and by the help of a dinner-pill digest a spoonful of curry,
you may sigh to think what a relish there was in potatoes, roasted in
ashes after you had digged them out of that ground with your own stout
young hands. Dig on, Lenny Fairfield, dig on! Dr. Riccabocca will tell