Finally, he asked him whether such was not the case. Many persons in the
place of Mr. Ribsam would have been tempted to fib, because almost every
one will admit any charge sooner than that of ignorance; but the
Dutchman considered lying one of the meanest vices of which a man can be
guilty. Like all of his countrymen, he had received a good school
education at home, besides which his mind possessed a natural
mathematical bent. He said he caught the answer to the question the
minute it was asked him, and, although Mr. Layton may not have seen it
before, Mr. Ribsam had met and conquered similar ones when he was a boy.
While he persistently refused to show Nick how to solve some of the
intricate problems brought home, yet when the son, after hours of
labor, was still all abroad, his father would ask him a question or two
so skillfully framed that the bright boy was quick to detect their
bearing on the subject over which he was puzzling his brain. The
parent's query was like the lantern's flash which shows the ladder for
which a man is groping.
The task of the evening being finished, Mr. Ribsam tested his boy with a
number of problems that were new to him. Most of them were in the nature
of puzzles, with a "catch" hidden somewhere. Nick could not give the
right answer in every instance, but he did so in a majority of cases; so
often, indeed, that his father did a rare thing,--he complimented his
skill and ability.
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