ge 66._)

Tony King was particularly struck with the improvement in the
coffee-mill, for his knuckles had received a full share of the general
skinning; and when the job was done, turning to the old man, he said,
"O, Uncle Benny, won't you teach me to do such things before you do all
the odd jobs about the farm?"

"Never fear that all the odd jobs about any farm, and especially such a
one as this, are going to be done in a hurry," he replied, laying his
hand gently on Tony's head. "If the owner of a farm, I don't care how
small it may be, would only take time to go over his premises, to
examine his fences, his gates, his barn-yard, his stables, his pig-pen,
his fields, his ditches, his wagons, his harness, his tools, indeed,
whatever he owns, he would find more odd jobs to be done than he has any
idea of. Why, my boy, all farming is made up of odd jobs. When Mr.
Spangler gets through with planting potatoes, don't he say, 'Well, that
job's done.' Didn't I hear you say yesterday, when you had hauled out
the last load of manure from the barn-yard,--it was pretty wet and muddy
at the bottom, you remember,--'There's a dirty job done!' And so it is,
Tony, with everything about a farm,--it is all jobbing; and as long as
one continues to farm, so long will there be jobs to do. The great point
is to finish each one up exactly at the time when it ought to be done."

"But that was not what I meant, Uncle Benny," said Tony. "I meant such
jobs as you do with your tools."

"Well," replied the old man, "it is pretty much the same thing there. A
farmer going out to hunt up such jobs as you speak of will find
directly, that, if he has no tool-chest on hand, his first business will
be to get one. Do you see the split in that board? Whoever drove that
nail should have had a gimlet to bore a hole; but having none, he has
spoiled the looks of his whole job. So it is with everything when a
farmer undertakes any work without proper tools. Spoiling it is quite as
bad as letting it alone.

"You see, Tony," he continued, "that a good job can't be done with bad
tools,--that split shows it. No doubt the man who made it excused
himself by saying that he was never intended for a mechanic. But that
was a poor excuse for being without a gimlet. Every man or boy has some
mechanical ability, and exercising that ability, with first-rate tools,
will generally make him a good workman. Now as to what odd jobs a farmer
will find to do. He steps out in