lizing and the quality of the truck
patches. A few years ago when the farmer scorned newfangled ideas it was
the boys that took home methods for numbering and testing each ear of
corn to determine whether or not the kernels on it would sprout when
they were planted. The farmer who turns a deaf ear to argument can offer
no effective reply to a corn-tester in which only one kernel in three
has sprouted. The ears are infertile, from one cause or another, and the
sooner he replaces them by fertile seed the better for his corn crop.

Out beside a white limestone pike stands the school in which Miss Belle
has done her work. One would hardly stop to look at it, because it
differs in no way from thousands of similar country school-houses.
Modest and unassuming, like Miss Belle, it holds only one feature of
real interest--the faces of the children. Bright, eager, enthusiastic,
they labor earnestly over their lessons in order that they may get at
their "busy work," and linger over their "busy work" during recess and
after school, because it glides so swiftly from their deft fingers. In
this, as in everything else which she does, Miss Belle has a system. The
child whose lessons are not done, and done up to a certain grade, is not
taught new stitches or new designs. Even the youngest responds to the
stimulus, and the little girl in a pink frock, with pink ribbons on her
brown pig-tails, lays aside the mat she is making to write "Annie Belle
Lewis" on the board, and to tell you that she is seven; while John
Murphy, of the mature age of eleven, stops crocheting ear-mufflers for a
moment to tell you what he is doing and why he does it.

V "Busy Work" as an Asset

"You never would guess what a help the 'busy work' is," smiled Miss
Belle. "You see, they never can do it until their lessons are finished,
so they are as good at arithmetic as they are at patching. Then I always
teach the little ones patterns and stitches where they have to count,
'One, two, three, four, five, and drop one,' you know, and in the
shortest time they learn their number work. It seems to go so much more
quickly when they do it in connection with some pieces that they can
see. But you never would guess the best thing the sewing has done--it
has stopped gossiping. It's hard to believe, I know, but it's true.
There used to be a lot of trouble in this neighborhood. People told
tales, there was ill feeling, and folks quarreled a great deal of the
time. It wasn't