508 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 



given the bees as fast as they needed more 

 room. The honey was eventually saved, but 

 it took several days to get it done, and its 

 flavor was spoiled for any thing but bee 

 food. Had it been sold at the grocery, each 

 pound of honey would have bought granula- 

 ted sugar enough for two pounds of better 

 and more wholesome food for tlie bees. 

 A-fter the honey was disposed of, friend M. 

 gave them a good-natured lecture on care- 

 lessness. His wife ventured to suggest that 

 accidents would sometimes happen, any way. 



"But, my friends, accidents, the greater 

 part of them, need not haiH^en." 



''Yes," chimed in John's father. "If 

 I^ncle Billy, the rich old curmudgeon, would 

 keep his cows shut up, instead of roaming 

 the streets, preying on the property of poor, 

 hard-working men like myself, there would 

 not be such accidents." 



Uncle Billy was the rich man of the neigh- 

 borhood, and it was talked about that he let 

 his cattle run in the streets when the grass 

 got liigh, presuming that no one would in- 

 terfere, just because he was rich. Mr. M. 

 therefore began as follows :— 



'• Look here, neighbor : it is (piite likely 

 that Uncle Billy has his faults, like all the 

 rest of us ; but it is a very bad way to get 

 into, of complaining of onr neighbors when 

 any thing goes wrong. It is a great deal 

 better to form a habit of shouldering what 

 seems to us to be a little more than oursliare 

 of every such transaction. Talking about 

 neighbors' faults seldom makes them any 

 better ; but talking about our own sins and 

 shortcomings, in the proper spirit, almost al- 

 ways brings about more or less of reform." 



" But, neighbor M., you don't pretend to 

 say that we were in any way at fault for the 

 C3w being in the street and pulling the crock 

 of honey over V '' 



" I do mean you were considerably at fault 

 in setting anything so valuable and fragile 

 in any such exposed public \)lace. It is true, 

 I never should have thougiit of a cow being 

 in the street, nor of her taking any such mis- 

 chievous notion into her head : but I should 

 have had a sort of instinctive dread of leav- 

 ing that crock standing in that way, outside 

 the fence, and this same feeling would have 

 prompted me to put it i)i a place of safety, or 

 ask somebody to watch it." 



" Father sat right in plain sight of it, 

 smoking his pipe, when I i)ut it there," sug- 

 gested John, who, human like, had a sort of 

 fancy for shoving the blame off on somebody 

 else, even though that somebody else was 

 his own father. 



Friend M. looked at the pipe, and then at 

 his wife, in a sort of undecided way, as if he 

 were questioning within himself whether it 

 would be well, or do any good, to attack 

 again that old subject of tobacco, but evi- 

 dently concluded to risk it. and proceeded, — 



"Neighbor, will you pardon the liberty, if 

 I say a word more about that pipe of yours V" 



John's father good-naturedly removed the 

 pipe from his mouth, and, holding it off a 

 little, while he contemplated it with a smile 

 and a sort of twinkle in his eye, said, — 



" By all means, friend M. : say any thing 

 about the p;"pe you choose," seeming to inti- 

 mate that, so long as he blamed the pipe, 



and not himself, it would be all right. His 

 friend, however, seemed to have no purpose 

 of letting him off in that way, for he went 

 on, — 



" Well, what I wished to say was this : 

 that, had your senses not been dulled by the 

 fumes of that pipe, you would have seen 

 that cow in time to have frightened her 

 away, and thus saved all this honey your 

 wife has thought so much of." 



Friend M. here stopped abruptly, and be- 

 gan feeling in his pockets, lirst one and then 

 the other. Finally he stood up and began 

 fumbling in his coat-tail pockets. At this 

 crisis of the proceeding, old Dobbin evident- 

 ly thought they had talked long enough, at 

 least on one subject ; and, deciding that fur- 

 ther forbearancs had ceased to be a virtue, 

 with sudden vehemence made a vigorous 

 push to go on. The effect was, in spite of 

 Mrs. M.'s efforts to the contrary, to throw 

 our rotund friend violently backward. In 

 his efforts to save himself he stuck out his 

 feet, but, alas ! they did not quite reach the 

 dash-board, and by the time he was fairly 

 on his back on "the seat, his feet stuck 

 straight up in the air. His feet and ankles, 

 although without question highly useful to 

 himself, at least, were so far from being or- 

 namental that, in spite of the evident dan- 

 ger, the children burst out laughing ; and as 

 his good wife, while she held old Dobbin 

 with one hand, took the other and pushed 

 the aforesaid feet and ankles down into 

 their proper position (thus bringing him 

 straight up on the seat), the rest joined 

 heartily in the laugh also. Even John's 

 mother laughed through her tears at his 

 queer, surprised look, until she almost cried 

 again; and then when friend ]SI. joined in, 

 the rest took another start, until old Dobbin 

 looked around to see if it were really true 

 that everybody had gone crazy, when there 

 was certdinly nothing to laugh at, at all. 

 Honest old IJobbin had his views of the fit- 

 ness of things as well as other people ; and 

 the oats at home that he would have had 

 long before this were to him more sensible 

 and substantial than any thing that all this 

 talk amounted to. If the truth were told, 

 he had played a more important part in the 

 morning's proceedings than any one there, 

 except John's father, was perhaps aware of; 

 for at the disputation about this tobacco, 

 John's father had begun to be violently 

 angry; after the laugh, however, he so far 

 forgot it that he was the first one to ask for 

 that wonderful something that was to come 

 out of the coat-tail pocket. 



" Why," said friend M., " here it is. It is 

 a little pamphlet, sold for 3 cents by Health 

 Reformer, Battle Creek, Mich., that I wish 

 to read from." Bidding Dobbin be quiet, 

 he adjusted his specs and read as follows : — 



TOBACCO-USING PnOMOTES CHEEHFULXESS. 



Tobacco stupefies, intoxicates, narcotizes; if this 

 is cheerfulness, then we may indorse the lines of the 

 poetic lover of the article who sang, 



Deprive the tobacco-chewer of his qnid, or the 

 smolier of his idolized pipe, and marls how soon his 

 cheerfulness disappears. How suddenly he awakes 

 to all the perplexities and irritations of life, like a 

 person awakening from sleep. 



The drunkard feels happy while sipping his bowl 



