SCENE V

A man who lived in the country had a son whom he made work ail the time in the fields. He had beets and cabbages which were so large and good that the father used to give them to his neighbours as objects of art, worthy to be put in their drawing-rooms. His friends would go home laden down with thèse heavy objects and give them to their servants, telling them to cook them or make salad of them.

As to the boy, he worked so much that he could not go to school. He had learned to Write in a few lessons, but his orthography was poor, and he never knew how to take the participles. Sometimes

84 Exercises for Composition.

they agreed and sometimes they did not. When he spoke it was not so bad, because nothing was seen, although he often pronounced without the liaisons.

This made the boy very sad, for he was ambitions, and he used to think that perhaps if he had gone to school he might some day be the first magistrate in the town and perhaps eveii deputy. He listened to ail the speeches he could hear in order to learn from them. When he was older he went into the lumbering business, and at last he astonished his father by becoming a well-informed man, looked up to by ail his neighbours.