s it?" said Mr. Harry.

"Lazy Dan Wilson. I've been to see him this afternoon. You know his wife
is sick, and they're half starved. He says he is going to the city, for
he hates to chop wood and work, and he thinks maybe he'll get some light
job there."

Mr. Harry looked grave, and Mr. Maxwell said, "He will starve, that's
what he will do."

"Precisely," said Mr. Wood, spreading out his hard, brown hands, as
he sat down at the table. "I don't know why it is, but the present
generation has a marvelous way of skimming around any kind of work with
their hands. They'll work their brains till they haven't got any more
backbone than a caterpillar, but as for manual labor, it's old-timey and
out of fashion. I wonder how these farms would ever have been carved
out of the backwoods, if the old Puritans had sat down on the rocks with
their noses in a lot of books, and tried to figure out just how little
work they could do, and yet exist."

"Now, father," said Mrs. Wood, "you are trying to insinuate that the
present generation is lazy, and I'm sure it isn't. Look at Harry. He
works as hard as you do."

"Isn't that like a woman?" said Mr. Wood, with a good-natured laugh.
"The present generation consists of her son, and the past of her
husband. I don't think all our young people are lazy, Hattie; but how
in creation, unless the Lord rains down a few farmers, are we going to
support all our young lawyers and doctors? They say the world is getting
healthier and better, but we've got to fight a little more, and raise
some more criminals, and we've got to take to eating pies and doughnuts
for breakfast again, or some of our young sprouts from the colleges will
go a begging."

"You don't mean to undervalue the advantages of a good education, do
you, Mr. Wood?" said Mr. Maxwell.

"No, no; look at Harry there. Isn't he pegging away at his studies with
my hearty approval? and he's going to be nothing but a plain, common
farmer. But he'll be a better one than I've been though, because he's
got a trained mind. I found that out when he was a lad going to the
village school. He'd lay out his little garden by geometry, and dig his
ditches by algebra. Education's a help to any man. What I am trying to
get at is this, that in some way or other we're running more to brains
and less to hard work than our forefathers did."

Mr. Wood was beating on the table with his forefinger while he
talked, and every one was laughing at him. "When you've