maul, which lay on the
ground, the handle having been broken short off in its socket.

"How the jobs turn up!" observed Uncle Benny. "How many have we here?"

"I should say about five," replied Tony.

"Yes," added the old man, "and all within sight of each other."

As they approached the hog-pen, they encountered a strong smell, and
there was a prodigious running and tumbling among the animals. They
looked over the shabby fence that formed the pen.

"Any jobs here, Tony?" inquired Uncle Benny.

Tony made no answer, but looked round to see if the old man kept his
screw-driver, half hoping that, if he found anything to point at, he
would have nothing to point with. But raising the tool, he poised it in
the direction of the feeding-trough. Tony could not avert his eyes, but,
directing them toward the spot at which the old man pointed, he
discovered a hole in the bottom of the trough, through which nearly half
of every feeding must have leaked out into the ground underneath. He had
never noticed it until now.

"There's another job for you, Tony," he said. "There's not only neglect,
but waste. The more hogs a man keeps in this way, the more money he will
lose. Look at the condition of this pen,--all mud, not a dry spot for
the pigs to fly to. Even the sheds under which they are to sleep are
three inches deep in slush. Don't you see that broken gutter from the
wood-shed delivers the rain right into their sleeping-place, and you
know what rains we have had lately? Ah, Tony," continued the old man,
"pigs can't thrive that are kept in this condition. They want a dry
place; they must have it, or they will get sick, and a sick pig is about
the poorest stock a farmer can have. Water or mud is well enough for
them to wallow in occasionally, but not mud all the time."

"But I thought pigs did best when they had plenty of dirt about them,
they like it so," replied Tony.

"You are mistaken, Tony," rejoined Uncle Benny. "A pig is by nature a
cleanly animal; it is only the way in which some people keep him that
makes him a filthy one. Give him the means to keep himself clean, and he
will be clean always,--a dry shed with dry litter to sleep in, and a pen
where he can keep out of the mud when he wants to, and he will never be
dirty, while what he eats will stick to his ribs. These pigs can't grow
in this condition. Then look at the waste of manure! Why, there are
those thirty odd loads of corn-stalks, and a great pile of sweet-po