Habits Of Industry

( Originally Published 1885 )

I HAVE given to this school many " Talks," first and last, and I fear most of them have been designed more particularly for the older classes. But this morning I pro-pose to address the younger boys, and if the older ones find anything interesting to listen to they are welcome to it. I often have occasion to think that many boys suppose their education is to be received wholly at school. Perhaps this thought is natural to them, but it is not true. Your education is quite as much, if not more, dependent upon what you do, and what you learn, out of school as in school. The home, the shop, the street, the rail car are schools for you, where you may add materially to the stock of knowledge and mental discipline which you acquire at school ; or, by a wrong course, you may overthrow and vitiate what good might otherwise be obtained from your school work. Let me point out one way in which you may improve yourselves out of school.

You all need to learn to be industrious. You should all have some duties to do at home, every day. These duties should always be performed with care and fidelity. You should remember that you are indebted to your parents, and brothers, and sisters, for the comforts of life, and each should have a desire to help in family affairs, to have your little duties to perform, which you would attend to scrupulously and conscientiously.

The small boy upon the farm has the best opportunity to learn these home lessons of industry. He will bring in the wood from the wood-house, feed the hens, water the horse, and in many ways make himself a useful member of the household. Habits of industry are among the most valuable lessons to be acquired in early youth.

Sometimes this industry may not be needed in the family in the ordinary manner, but there may be special reasons and particular ways of exercising it, which will have a vast influence upon the future life of the boy. It not unfrequently happens that a boy may show his love to his sister or his mother by some skillful work, devised and executed by him, which will be of more service to him than to them. A few evenings since I was thinking over this subject, and a number of illustrations came to my mind, which I wished to give to you. In order that I might not forget them, and that I might relate them in the most graphic manner, I wrote them out, and now propose to read them to you. The first one is designed to illustrate a boy's love for his sister, and tells what means he found for carrying out his purpose of securing fol. her a new pen-knife. I was well acquainted with the persons mentioned in the story, and can vouch for the truth of it.

I have written it, as though told by the sister who was a school-teacher to her school-boys.

MY NEW PEN-KNIFE

A TRUE STORY FOR BOYS

Now, my dear boys, I want to tell you a true story. It is not one of those tales which claim to be " founded on fact," but, as I know you like truth better than fiction, my story shall be wholly true.

You must know, then, that my brother and I were orphan children. Our dear father died when we were quite young. We lived at grandfather's. We had an older sister, Ruth, who lived with our mother. My brother and I loved each other dearly, and shared each other's joys and sorrows.

When I was fifteen years old I began my life work of teaching school. It was many years ago, and every teacher was obliged to make and mend the pens for the scholars, for steel pens had not then come into use, but quills were always used for writing. It was necessary for me, therefore, to have a pen-knife. My mother bought me one, a cheap one, paying twelve and a half cents for it. The sides of the handle were made of horn, and were transparent. Under the horn was a motto, on each side. On the one side was the motto, —

"A friend in need is a friend indeed." On the other side was the motto,—" Fair and softly goes far in a day."

I took my knife to our good Uncle Buffum, our great uncle, being brother to our grandmother, that he might sharpen it.

He honed it, and strapped it, and tried it again and again, but could not get a good edge upon it. He said it was "good for nothing ; it was soft."

Well, my brother, who was four years younger than I was, sat and watched Uncle Buffum work away, trying in vain to get a good edge upon the knife. When he saw that the knife was not fit to make a pen with, he went away very sad, thinking how much he wished it were in his power to buy his dear sister a better knife. But he had no money. We were all poor. We lived on a farm four or five miles from any village. But, you know, boys, that where there is a will there is a way. One of the good mottoes for ambitious youth is this, —

" Find a way or make a way."

So my brother thought and thought upon the subject, till he found a way to get me a new knife. He caught a woodchuck, took off its skin, and asked his Uncle Richard to tan the skin for him. This was done by taking off the hair in wood ashes, and then placing the skin, properly prepared, in soft soap. After it had remained in the soap a sufficient length of time, it was taken out, and finally became a soft, nice piece of good leather.

Then, Uncle Buffum, who was a shoemaker, a watchmaker, a general tinker (a most ingenious man), was applied to, with the request that from this skin he would cut out the strands for a whip-lash.

At length that was done, and my little brother, then between eleven and twelve years old, went to work to braid a long whip-lash, such as the farmers use in driving their oxen.

It was no easy task, but the boy's love for his sister triumphed, and erelong he had a nice whiplash, some four feet long, all finished, and properly tied at the end.

Now he waited for an opportunity to go to the village and sell it. Soon the time came when a large bag of salt was needed to salt the hay, which was rapidly filling the barn, and my brother was dispatched to the village to obtain it.

Hastily running up-stairs to his room, he took the lash and carried it with him to the village store. Having purchased the salt, and seeing it placed in the hind end of the farm wagon, he tremblingly exhibited to the store-keeper his white, well-braided whip-lash, and asked him if he would buy it.

" Where did you get it?" asked the merchant.

"I braided it myself," said the boy.

" Did you, indeed ! You must be a pretty smart boy. What do you want to buy with t ; some candy?"

" No, sir. I want to get a first rate pen knife for my sister ; a good one, one of your 'Rodgers, Cutlers to Her Majesty,' knives."

So the bargain was concluded, and the lash was exchanged for a good, black-handled, Rodgers pen-knife, the price of which was two shillings, that is, thirty-three cents.

I need not tell you how pleased my brother was, how many times he took that knife out of his pocket on the way home, to look at it, or how he seized the first opportunity to get Uncle Buffum to sharpen its edge.

It was finally honed and strapped, until Uncle Buffum said, "There, that will cut like buttermilleck. It is a piece of excellent steel ; a first-rate knife."

How happy was my brother, how anxious he was to give it to me ; and when he did present it, with what pride he said, —

" There ; there is a knife that will mend a pen. It is real 'Rodgers, Cutlers,' and you may throw a way that old soft thing that mother bought. I am not going to have my sister mend pen- with such a mean old knife. Here, take this ; I bought it for you ; it is yours."

But I did not throw the old knife away. I kept it; and I kept the other, too, as a precious love-token from my brother. How many pens I have made and mended with the "Rodgers " knife, I cannot tell. But during those years before the advent of steel pens, I always used it, and no other. Then I laid the dear knife away beside the other, and there the two lie today in one of my little pasteboard boxes in a closet. My dear boys, the good Apostle John said, " Little children, love one another."

There are but few pleasanter sights in this world than a family of children where love prevails, and where all seek the good of others, and show their love for one another by working and planning and contriving to make each other happy.

I think you will agree with me that the story is a good one, and the spirit of it is worthy of imitation.

Sometimes this habit of industry may be exercised by an inventive genius in devising ways to obtain money for general or particular benevolent purposes. My next story will illustrate what I mean, in this direction.

It is entitled —

FIRST EARN, THEN GIVE.

"Papa, please give me ten cents?"

" What for, my son ? "

" To put in the contribution-box."

"Here is five cents ; that will do today." "Thank you, papa."

And the little fellow skipped along by his father's side, going to church one bright Sunday morning several years ago.

But I count hardly listen to the sermon, so absorbed was I in thinking of that little boy. He was a bright little fellow, with blue eyes and curly hair, and I felt from his very looks and elastic step that he was a good boy. But I want to tell you about another little boy, who really envied him, as he danced along by his father's side. This little fellow, whose name was Henry, was on his way to Sunday school that same morning, when he met with an accident which obliged him to turn about and go home again. He had six cents in his pocket to put in the collection that day, to help buy new books for the Sabbath-school library. But his father had not given him the money, for he was poor. The Sunday school which Henry attended was a small one, in a little mission church, in the suburbs of one of our New England cities, and was at this time making a great effort to get an addition to its small library. The superintendent had told the children that it was far better for them to earn the money which they gave than to have it given to them by their parents. He told them of the little boy who collected a good sum of money for the missionaries by carrying around among his friends an ox's horn, with the large end plugged up and a slit in it where the money could be dropped in, which was labeled, —

" Once I was the horn of an ox, But now I am a missionary box."

He advised the boys and girls to try to earn the money they brought, and gave some suggestions how it could be done. I do not know how many, if any, followed those suggestions ; but I do know that some of them invented plans of their own, and earned the money, and contributed liberally for that library. Let me tell you how some of the boys did it.

Henry was a small boy, only six years old. He could not do many kinds of work. Indeed be could not think for some time of any way by which he could earn a penny.. At last, he thought of his way, and during the week preceding the Sunday of which I have spoken he put his plan in practice.

He went around the neighborhood, through the streets and open lots, and picked up every bone and every piece of paper that he saw, and on Saturday sold them to the junk dealer, by which he earned six cents. This money he was carrying to the Sunday school when he overheard the little blue-eyed boy asking his father for the ten cents. When his father gave him only five, Henry smiled, and thought to himself, " Well, I have more than he, and have earned mine; it was not given to me." I am sorry to say that just then Henry stepped into a hole in the side-walk, and sprained his ankle so badly that he could not get to Sunday school, but was obliged to go home. Yet, even in his pain, he was not to be deprived of the pleasure of giving the money he had earned, and so sent it along by his sister.

Now let me tell you of another boy, who wanted to earn some money for that library. He found another plan. He was a little fellow of about eight years, and his name was Eddie. His mother was a widow, and earned a scanty support for herself and her children by sewing. Eddie asked his mother to give him some money for the library, and she was obliged to tell him she had none. At first Eddie felt very badly, but after a while he began to think whether there was any way for him to earn something. Across the half-graded street from the little cottage where his mother lived was an open field, then thickly covered with those large, " round, white and yellow daisies. These flowers he picked, and carried them to an herb store, and sold them for four cents a pound. Afterwards he and his brother Georgie picked red clover blossoms, and sold them at two cents a pound, and then white clover blossoms at five cents a pound. I think these two little boys earned in a few weeks more than a dollar and a half in this way, which they contributed toward buying those new books. But I must tell you what one other little boy of about eight years did. His name was Walter. He wanted to do some-thing for the library, and, as he could think of nothing by which he could earn money immediately, he invented the following plan :

His father had a little garden, and had al-lowed him to plant in a small bed whatever he chose. Singularly enough he had chosen to plant a bed of citrons. These he weeded and hoed, and watched and watered, until in the fall he found daily ripening a goodly number of nice citrons. When they were fully ripe he inquired at the stores the price of citrons, and then, placing his price some-what lower than the market value, he carried his citrons about the neighborhood upon his little cart, and sold them all, and handed in the money to the Sunday school for the library fund. If I remember correctly, he secured something over two dollars.

I have indicated to you by these stories some ways in which boys have earned money for good purposes. Though you may not, and probably could not, do exactly the same thing, yet as these boys invented ways of doing what they desired to do, so I think, if you have the desire, you also will invent a way of accomplishing your desire. " Where there is a will there is a way." " Find a way or make a way."