102 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



tie home-nursery, look out for rabbits. They usually depre- 

 date just after a light fall of snow. 



Overhaul all your plows, carts, shovels, hoes, etc., and 

 put everything in complete readiness. 



While you are moving about and repairing holes in the 

 fence, putting on a rail here, a stake yonder, a rider in 

 another place, you may inquire of yourself whether your 

 character is not in some need of repairs ? Perhaps you are 

 very careless and extravagant the fence needs rails there ; 

 perhaps you are lazy in that case the fence corners may 

 be said to be full of brambles and weeds, and must be 

 cleared out ; perhaps you are a violent, passionate man 

 you need a stake and rider on that spot. And lastly, per- 

 haps you are not temperate, if so, your fence is all going 

 down and will soon have gaps enough to let in all the hogs 

 of indolence, vice, and crime : and they make a large drove 

 and fatten fast. Now is a good time to plan how to get 

 out of debt. Don't be ashamed to save in little things, 

 nor to earn small gains : "Many a mickle makes a muckle." 

 But set it down, to begin with, that no saving is made by 

 cheating yourself out of a good newspaper. No man reads 

 a good paper a year, without saving by it. Suppose you 

 put in your wheat a little better for something you see 

 written by a good farmer and get five bushels more to the 

 acre. One acre pays for a year's paper. One recipe, a 

 hint which betters any crop, pays for the paper fourfold. 

 Intelligent boys work better, plan better, earn and save 

 better ; and reading a good paper makes them intelligent. 

 Besides, suppose you took a good paper a year, and found 

 nothing new during all that time (an incredible supposi- 

 tion !), yet every two weeks it comes to jog your memory 

 about things which you may forget, but ought not to forget. 

 It steps in and asks whether that little store bill is paid ? 

 Whether that loan drawing a fatal six, seven or ten per cent 

 (poison! poison! deadly poison!) is being melted down? 

 .whether the children are going to school? whether the 



