1879 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



499 



The contents of this leaf and the one following are 

 not directty connected with the subject of bee-culture. 

 On this account, I make no charge for them, and, if you 

 choose, you can cut them out ivithout reading. 



\ur f ovw 



In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall di- 

 rect thy paths.— Pruv. III. 6. 



X 



HAVE mentioned before the great num- 

 bers of applications I have always had 

 = for something to do. After the events 

 narrated in my last chapter, for some reason 

 Which I can hardly explain, the number of 

 applications was, all at once, greatly increas- 

 ed. Not only that, but those who applied to 

 me seemed more free to tell me of their 

 needs, and why they were so very anxious 

 for something to do. A great many offered 

 to work for .Wc a day, and I knew, if I gave 

 them work, this amount would go for the 

 very necessaries of life. In my anxiety to 

 help those who needed help, 1 set one after 

 another at work, until I had over eighty, 

 children and all, in my employ. As it was 

 my wish, or perhaps you might say, one of 

 my pet projects, to employ everybody who 

 asked for employment, — good, bad, and in- 

 different, with the hope of doing them good, 

 I soon had, in some respects, a motley crew 

 about me. Now, I do not want to complain, 

 for every one of these eighty were so willing 

 to do all that I asked them to do, that it 

 sometimes touched my heart to see them so 

 ready and willing. 



Boys that were so much in the habit of 

 swearing that it came as naturally as to draw 

 a breath, stopped right off, when I told them 

 my wishes, and, provided I could furnish 

 them the wished for employment, nothing 

 more seemed required but to make known 

 clearly to them, my wishes in regard to mor- 

 als, etc. To keep a supervision untiringly, 

 over so many, was no small task, 1 can tell 

 you, let alone the spiritual work I was intent 

 upon doing ; and were it not for many little 

 texts like the one at the head of this, to en- 

 able me to cast all my trials upon my Savior, 

 I should have become demoralized, and 

 broken down in short metre. 



You see, the amount of talking that need- 

 ed to be done was immense ; and that I 

 might be spared the trouble of saying so 

 many things over and over again, I did once 

 or twice call a meeting of the hands, and 

 told them of the things we needed to do 

 that we might prosper temporally as well as 

 spiritually. There were difficulties in the 

 way of all this, such as getting them all to- 

 gether, unless I paid them for their time, 

 etc. They were all very pleasant and good- 

 natured, and I presume would just as soon 

 be scolded an hour every day as not, if I did 

 it pleasantly and paid them for their time ; 

 but if these talks lasted an hour, it cost me 

 about five dollars, and I felt as if I could 

 hardly afford that either. Finally, I be- 

 thought me of my large printing-press as a 

 medium of talking to my hands (in the same 

 way I talk to you, my friends), and I wrote 

 the articles headed, " Work and Wages," in 

 the January and February numbers. The 



proof-reader suggested that they were good 

 enough to put into Gleanings, and so they 

 were used, as you have seen, with some al- 

 terations. The articles did good, of which I 

 had abundant evidence ; but the good was, 

 perhaps, mostly far away, for the hands 

 knew me so well they thought I must mean 

 it for some one else, I suppose. 



Well, when I thought of the needy ones 

 around me who would make a good use of 

 the money, contrasted with those who used 

 their money to ride about on the Sabbath, 

 smoking, chewing, etc., my conscience be- 

 gan to suggest that the business God had 

 given me was hardly being used for the fur- 

 therance of his honor and glory. I have be- 

 fore spoken of the obscenity and profanity 

 that I found written on the out-buildings. 

 Tobacco-juice and •' quids " greeted me more 

 frequently than usual, and a tobacco store 

 was just started in our town, which my bus- 

 iness seemed very likely, at least, to help 

 materially in supporting. The windows of 

 my new buildings were broken almost daily, 

 but it was as impossible to tell who did it as 

 to tell who persistently defied me in the ob- 

 scene writing. Boys who promised me so 

 fairly to go to Sunday-school and church 

 (proposing it themselves, if I would give 

 them work), had apparently forgotten all 

 about it, and the more money they earned 

 the more they broke the Sabbath. I was 

 told that one of my small boys said he did 

 not smoke while going to school, because he 

 had no money with which to buy cigars, but 

 that as soon as he went to work for me again 

 and got some more money, lie was going to 

 smoke again. Several others of my young 

 boys, and some who had always been to Sab- 

 bath-school, took their money Saturday 

 nights and bought a kind of cheap cigar 

 called cigarettes, I believe, and in that way 

 learned to use tobacco. One young man 

 who lived a little out in the country, taught 

 all the boys of a country school how to use 

 tobacco, and he himself learned how while 

 working for me. All this time were widows 

 and poor girls in our town, who wanted 

 work that they might get, honestly and in- 

 dependently, the necessaries of life. There 

 were also young men, at least a few of them, 

 who were anxious to get money to enable 

 them to get an education. It was in my 

 power to throw this money in whichever di- 

 rection I should choose. "Whom should I 

 employ ? 



If I should decide to take only those who 

 made a good use of their money, I should 

 lose all hold upon and power over the worse 

 class, which I had been helping very materi- 

 ally, at least. Perhaps if I told them just 

 what I wanted, they would alter their hab- 

 its and ways. It would certainly be no more 

 than fair that I should tell them what I de- 

 sired, and give them a chance with the rest. 

 By talking with them, many of them did do 

 better. 



Now you must not get an idea that it was 

 the boys only of my establishment who 

 needed reforming in their morals. Our town, 

 like many another, has a large dancing hall, 

 and some of our most respectable men and 

 women — I guess there is no mistake about 

 this assertion, is there V — some of our most 



