Then the Scholar;
With eyes severe, and hair of formal cut.

Nothing is quite so hard, I think,
As drawing maps with pen and ink.
You dot the cities, every one,
And make long lines where rivers run.
And every single coasting line
Must wave in curves as fine as fine.
The rivers wriggle up and down
Across the green and through the brown;
You have to measure all the while,—
A half an inch is 'most a mile.
I do think maps are awful queer,
They seem to bring the whole world here.
Why, as I sit here in my chair,
I see the countries everywhere.
I see across to far Japan,
With funny people, like a fan.

All red and purple clothes they wear,
And knobby hatpins in their hair,
And flowers and trees of simple kind,
And that big mountain far behind.
Then, in the class, we have to give
Description where the natives live.
The countries that are colored pink
Are where the natives live, I think.
The people that live there, I'm sure
Must be extremely sad and poor,
With only rice and things to eat,
And not a single shady street.
I wonder if they ever think
They live in countries colored pink.
But drawing maps,—that isn't all;
I was promoted in the Fall,
And now I've lots of bigger books.
Reading is harder than it looks.
You have to say your words just so,
You mustn't read too fast or slow.
It 'stracts you so, you can't find out,
Sometimes, what stories are about.
But reader stories, anyway,
Are never very glad or gay;
They're mostly 'bout some noble deed,
With fine, high-sounding words to read.
And though it sounds quite loud and grand,
It's pretty hard to understand.
But Friday afternoon's the time!
We all speak pieces made of rhyme.
Next week, mine is the loveliest one,
About "The South Wind and the Sun."
It has such soft and singing words,
Like "lily-bells, and humming birds."
The south wind and the sun, you see,
Were comrades, just like May and me.
And they went wandering all about,
Just full of laugh, and gleeful shout.
Dancing all springy on their toes;
Wait! This is the way it goes:
"Arm in arm they went together,
Over heights of morning haze.
"Over slanting slopes of lawn,
They went on and on and on,
Where the daisies looked like star-tracks,
Trailing up and down the dawn."
Don't you think that is nice to say
Upon a breezy, shiny day?
Some poets just know how to write,
The loveliest pieces to recite;
So many that I'd love to speak,
And just one Friday in each week!
But then I study other things,—
The Civil War, and Saturn's rings,—
I have to study hard, for, oh!
There is so much I want to know.
There's lots of knowledge, I suppose,
More even than my Grandpa knows.
I look ahead, and seem to see
That knowledge waiting there for me.
I think, when I grow big and tall,
I prob'ly shall have learned it all.