“Mamma, please, will you lay down the hem for me?” said Lily. _Page 27._ ]
“Nay,” replied the Thimble gaily, “I have not numbered one half of them,—
“Manganese, cobalt, rhodium, Copper, potassium, sodium—”
“Who ever such names bestowed on ’em? Such long names I hold in odium!”
“There’s rhyme, but not reason,” laughed the Thimble.
“If it is hard to number up the metals,” I observed, “how impossible must it be to count all the uses to which they are put!”
“Impossible indeed,” said the Thimble. “Man avails himself every day, every hour, of the treasures which he has won from the mine—for
“Ploughing, digging, and hoeing; Cooking, ironing, mowing; Cutting, sawing, and sewing; Holding the embers glowing; Speeding the vessel’s going; Music, when horns are blowing; Money, when debts are owing; Bridges, where streams are flowing, Lace, where finery’s showing; Greenhouse, where plants are growing—”
“In short, there’s no counting or knowing All that man to metals is owing!”
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“SEWING! how I hate sewing! I wonder what use there is in my learning to sew,” exclaimed Lily, in rather a fretful tone, as she took me out of the box.
“I wonder what’s the use of learning to spell!” yawned little Eddy over a dog’s-eared book, as he sat on a stool close by his mother.
Mrs. Ellerslie was busy at her desk, examining her monthly accounts, with a grave and anxious expression. She was interrupted, in the midst of summing up a long bill, by her little girl bringing her work to her.
“Yes, my dear,” said Mrs. Ellerslie, without raising her eyes, and continued murmuring half aloud, “Thirteen pounds and a half at seven-pence three-farthings—I thought there must be an error somewhere.”
“Mamma, please will you lay down the hem for me?”
“Really, my love, I am very busy at present. I think that, after all the trouble which I have taken to teach you, you might manage to do that for yourself;” and again she went on with her accounts; while Lily, looking rather discontented, slowly returned to her seat.
“Mamma,” said Eddy, rising, and laying his book on her knee, “I know my lesson.”
“Wait a minute, my boy; I will hear you almost directly.”
So Eddy waited cheerfully enough, and, to amuse himself in the meantime, began trying to mend his mother’s pen, to the no small damage of the pen, and the imminent risk of his own fingers.