been hungry, fond as a bear is of
pork, to venture so near a house by daylight!"

"What a warm fur!" observed Mr. Lee, "just feel how thick the hair is!"

"But what can we do with such a mountain of flesh and fat?" asked Tom.
"We can't eat it, and we've no dogs."

"O, we'll eat it fast enough!" replied his uncle; "a bear ham is a
delicacy, I assure you."

"I think we may as well set about skinning and cutting it up for curing
at once, as we have little to do to-day. What say you, John?"

"Yes, we had better; but we must do the business here, for the skin
would be quite spoiled were we to attempt to drag the carcase into the
yard, though it would be more convenient to have it there. We can take
the hams and fur, and leave the rest."

"What a busy day this has been," said Tom, that evening, when he and his
sister had finished the reading and writing lessons their father gave
them every night; "what with helping to catch the bear, and then to skin
and cut him up, and dinner and tea, and reading and writing, I've not
had a spare moment."

"As to helping to catch the bear," said his father, laughing, "you may
leave that out of the catalogue of your occupations."

"Not at all, father; for, if I hadn't gone to see what was the matter,
he would have walked off with the pig, and no one the wiser."

"Oh, certainly, Tom helped!" cried his uncle; "and his mother helped,
too, for, you remember, she wondered what was the matter in the
hog-pen!"

"I don't mind your fun, uncle," said Tom; "I shall shoot a bear myself
some day."

"I'm glad that, if the poor bear was to come, it came to-day rather than
to-morrow, for to-morrow will be Sunday," remarked Annie; "the week has
seemed so short to me!"

"So it has to me," said her brother; "the weeks seem to fly fast."

"Because you are always occupied," observed Mr. Lee; "time is long and
tedious only with the idle. What a blessing work is; it adds in every
way to the happiness of life!--it is good for the mind, and good for the
body!"

"I used to think it very disagreeable, I remember!"

"You have grown wiser as well as older, Tom, during the past year," said
his mother.

"If I only do so every year, mother!"

"If you do, Tom, you will indeed be a happy man, for the ways of wisdom
are ways of pleasantness;--but it must be time for your usual wash."

"Aye, so it is! I believe I like the Saturday night wash almost as well
as the Sunday rest. One seems to feel better, as