"You have been smoking. You smell as strong of tobacco smoke as a
bar-room loafer."

"Smoking!" exclaimed Mrs. Woggs, with horror.

"Have you been smoking, Tommy?" asked his father sternly.

The poor sufferer felt so bad, he had no courage to tell a lie, and
he was obliged to own that he had been smoking.

When he felt a little better, his father questioned him so closely,
that in spite of his promise, Tommy had to say he had "hooked jack"
that forenoon, and that he had been in the woods with Joe and Ben,
where each of them had smoked a cigar.

Dr. Woggs went to the school that afternoon, and told Miss Dale
all about it; and then to the parents of Joe and Ben, and told them
all about it. The truants were all punished; and as the
schoolmistress promised to send word to their homes when either of
them was absent again, they had no chance to "hook jack"
afterwards.

Tommy was as well as ever the next day; but that red eye became a
black eye, and the children laughed at him for a week.

He thought how much trouble he had caused himself by being proud
and lazy, and he resolved to be a better boy. He did very well for
some time; he went to school without complaining, and didn't talk
big; but he was not entirely cured.

It often takes a great while to get rid of bad habits; but we
should banish them, even if it takes a whole lifetime to do so.

CARELESS KATE.

[Illustration: She tried to look as if nothing had happened.--Page
83.]

CARELESS KATE.

I.

"Kate!" said Mrs. Lamb to her daughter, who was playing in the
garden, in front of the house.

"What do you want, mother?" replied the little girl, without even
lifting her eyes from the ground, in which she was planting a
marigold.

I don't think any of my young readers regard this as a proper
answer for a little girl to make to her mother; and I hope none of
them ever speak to their parents in this manner.

"Come into the house. I want you," added her mother.

But Kate did not go till she got ready. She was not in the habit of
minding her mother at once, and without asking any improper
questions, as all good children do, or ought to do, at least.

When she stepped out of the bed of flowers, in which she had been
at work, instead of looking to see where she put her feet, she kept
her eyes fixed on the place where she had just planted the
marigold.

"Look before you leap" is a good motto for everybody--for children,
as well as for men