DREAMING AND DOING.
AMY was a dear little girl in many things, but she had one bad habit,—she was too apt to waste time in dreaming of doing, instead of doing. In the village where she lived, Mr. Thornton kept a small shop, where he sold fruit of all kinds, including berries in their season. One day he said to Amy, "Would you like to make some money?"
"Of course I should!" said Amy; "for my mother has often to go without things she needs so that she may buy shoes or clothes for me."
"Well, Amy, I noticed some fine, ripe black-berries in the hedges around Mr. Green's field; and he said that I or anybody else was welcome to them. Now, if you will pick the ripest and best, I will pay you eight pence a quart for them." Amy was delighted at the thought, and ran home and got her basket, and called her little dog Quilp, meaning to go at once to pick the berries.
Then she thought she would like to find out, with the aid of her slate and pencil, how much money she would make if she were to pick five quarts. She found she would make three shillings and four pence—almost enough to buy a new calico dress.
"But supposing I should pick a dozen quarts, how much should I earn then?" So she stopped and figured that out. "Dear me! It would come to eight shillings!" Amy then wanted to know how much fifty, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred quarts would give her; and then how much she could get if she were to put it in the savings-bank, and receive five per cent interest on it. Quilp grew impatient, but Amy did not heed his barking; and when she was at last ready to start, she found it was so near dinner-time that she must put off her gathering till the afternoon. As soon as dinner was over, she took her basket, and hurried to the field; but a whole troop of boys from the school were there before her. Amy soon found that all the large, ripe berries had been gathered. Not enough to make up a single quart could she find. The boys had swept the bushes clean. All Amy's grand dreams of making a fortune by picking blackberries were at an end slowly and sadly she went to her home, recalling on the way the words of her teacher, who said to her, " One doer is better than a hundred dreamers."
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