e. Even the newsboys run about the streets as actively, and a
hundred other kinds of workers keep on without interruption.

If the laboring men of a large city were to quit work because of a hard
rain, there would be a loss of many thousand dollars for every such day
that happened. So also with a farmer. There is plenty of rainy-day work
on a farm, if the owner only knew it, or thought of it beforehand, and
set his men or boys to do it,--in the barn, or cellar, or wood-shed. If
he had a bench and tools, a sort of workshop, a rainy day would be a
capital time for him to teach his boys how to drive a nail, or saw a
board, or push a plane, to make a new box or mend an old one, to put a
new handle in an axe or hoe, or to do twenty such little things as are
always wanted on a farm. Besides saving the time and money lost by
frequent running to the blacksmith or wheelwright, to have such trifles
attended to, things would be kept always ready when next wanted, and his
boys would become good mechanics. There is so much of this kind of light
repairing to be done on a farm, that, having a set of tools, and knowing
how to use them, are almost as indispensable as having ploughs and
harrows, and the boys cannot be too early instructed in their use. Many
boys are natural mechanics, and even without instruction could
accomplish great things if they only had a bench and tools. The making
of the commonest bird-box will give an ambitious boy a very useful
lesson.

It seemed that Mr. Spangler was learning nothing while he lived. His
main idea appeared to be, that farming was an affair of muscle
only,--that it was hands, not heads, that farmers ought to have; and
that whoever worked hardest and longest, wasted no time in reading,
spent no money for fine cattle or better breeds of pigs, or for new
seeds, new tools or machines, and stuck to the good old way, was the
best farmer. He never devoted a day now and then to visiting the
agricultural exhibitions which were held in all the counties round him,
where he would be sure to see samples of the very best things that good
farmers were producing,--fine cattle, fine pigs, fine poultry, and a
hundred other products which sensible men are glad to exhibit at such
fairs, knowing that it is the smart men who go to such places to learn
what is going on, as well as to make purchases, and that it is the
agricultural drones who stay at home. The fact was, he had been badly
educated, and he could not sha