Donal Grant

"The least funny, the most serious lesson you could teach me! You are a book God has begun, and he has sent me to help him go on with it; so I must learn what he has written already before I try to do anything."

"But you know what a boy is, sir! Why should you want to learn me?"

"You might as well say that, because I have read one or two books, I must know every book. To understand one boy helps to understand another, but every boy is a new boy, different from every other boy, and every one has to be understood."

"Yes—for sometimes Arkie won't hear me out, and I feel so cross with her I should like to give her a good box on the ear. What king was it, sir, that made the law that no lady, however disagreeable, was to have her ears boxed? Do you think it a good law, sir?"

"It is good for you and me anyhow."

"And when Percy says, 'Oh, go away! don't bother,' I feel as if I could hit him hard! Yet, if I happen to hurt him, I am so sorry! and why then should I want to hurt him?"

"There's something in this little fellow!" said Donal to himself. "Ah, why indeed?" he answered. "You see you don't understand yourself yet!"

"No indeed!"

"Then how could you think I should understand you all at once?—and a boy must be understood, else what's to become of him! Fancy a poor boy living all day, and sleeping all night, and nobody understanding him!"

"That would be dreadful! But you will understand me?"

"Only a little: I'm not wise enough to understand any boy."

"Then—but isn't that what you said you came for?—I thought—"

"Yes," answered Donal, "that is what I came for; but if I fancied I quite understood any boy, that would be a sure sign I did not understand him.—There is one who understands every boy as well as if there were no other boy in the whole world."

"Then why doesn't every boy go to him when he can't get fair play?"

"Ah, why? That is just what I want you to do. He can do better than give you fair play even: he can make you give other people fair play, and delight in it."

"Tell me where he is."

"That is what I have to teach you: mere telling is not much use. Telling is what makes people think they know when they do not, and makes them foolish."

"What is his name?"

"I will not tell you that just yet; for then you would think you knew him, when you knew next to nothing about him. Look here; look at this book," he went on, pulling a copy of Boethius from his pocket; "look at the name on the back of it: it is the name of the man that wrote the book."

Davie spelled it out.

"Now you know all about the book, don't you?"

"No, sir; I don't know anything about it."

"Well then, my father's name is Robert Grant: you know now what a good man he is!"

"No, I don't. I should like to see him though!"

"You would love him if you did! But you see now that knowing the name of a person does not make you know the person."

"But you said, sir, that if you told me the name of that person, I should fancy I knew all about him: I don't fancy I know all about your father now you have told me his name!"

"You have me there!" answered Donal. "I did not say quite what I ought to have said. I should have said that when we know a little about a person, and are used to hearing his name, then we are ready to think we know all about him. I heard a man the other day—a man who had never spoken to your father—talk as if he knew all about him."

"I think I understand," said Davie.

To confess ignorance is to lose respect with the ignorant who would appear to know. But there is a worse thing than to lose the respect even of the wise—to deserve to lose it; and that he does who would gain a respect that does not belong to him. But a confession of ignorance is a ground of respect with a well-bred child, and even with many ordinary boys will raise a man's influence: they recognize his loyalty to the truth. Act-truth is infinitely more than fact-truth; the love of the truth infinitely beyond the knowledge of it.

They went out together, and when they had gone the round of the place outside, Davie would have taken him over the house; but Donal said they would leave something for another time, and made him lie down for ten minutes. This the boy thought a great hardship, but Donal saw that he needed to be taught to rest. Ten times in those ten minutes he was on the point of jumping up, but Donal found a word sufficient to restrain him. When the ten minutes were over, he set him an addition sum. The boy protested he knew all the rules of arithmetic.

"But," said Donal, "I must know that you know them; that is my business. Do this one, however easy it is."

The boy obeyed, and brought him the sum—incorrect.

"Now, Davie," said Donal, "you said you knew all about addition, but you have not done this sum correctly."

"I have only made a blunder, sir."

"But a rule is no rule if it is not carried out. Everything goes on the supposition of its being itself, and not something else. People that talk about good things without doing them are left out. You are not master of addition until your addition is to be depended upon."

The boy found it hard to fix his attention: to fix it on something he did not yet understand, would be too hard! he must learn to do so in the pursuit of accuracy where he already understood! then he would not have to fight two difficulties at once—that of understanding, and that of fixing his attention. But for a long time he never kept him more than a quarter of an hour at work on the same thing.

When he had done the sum correctly, and a second without need of correction, he told him to lay his slate aside, and he would tell him a fairy-story. Therein he succeeded tolerably—in the opinion of Davie, wonderfully: what a tutor was this, who let fairies into the school-room!

The tale was of no very original construction—the youngest brother gaining in the path of righteousness what the elder brothers lose through masterful selfishness. A man must do a thing because it is right, even if he die for it; but truth were poor indeed if it did not bring at last all things subject to it! As beauty and truth are one, so are truth and strength one. Must God be ever on the cross, that we poor worshippers may pay him our highest honour? Is it not enough to know that if the devil were the greater, yet would not God do him homage, but would hang for ever on his cross? Truth is joy and victory. The true hero is adjudged to bliss, nor can in the nature of things, that is, of God, escape it. He who holds by life and resists death, must be victorious; his very life is a slaying of death. A man may die for his opinion, and may only be living to himself: a man who dies for the truth, dies to himself and to all that is not true.

"What a beautiful story!" cried Davie when it ceased. "Where did you get it, Mr. Grant?"

"Where all stories come from."

"Where is that?"

"The Think-book."

"What a funny name! I never heard it! Will it be in the library?"

"No; it is in no library. It is the book God is always writing at one end, and blotting out at the other. It is made of thoughts, not words. It is the Think-book."

"Now I understand! You got the story out of your own head!"

"Yes, perhaps. But how did it get in to my head?"

"I can't tell that. Nobody can tell that!"

"Nobody can that never goes up above his own head—that never shuts the Think-book, and stands upon it. When one does, then the Think-book swells to a great mountain and lifts him up above all the world: then he sees where the stories come from, and how they get into his head.—Are you to have a ride to-day?"

"I ride or not just as I like."

"Well, we will now do just as we both like, I hope, and it will be two likes instead of one—that is, if we are true friends."