Pleasures 


BUSINESS FIRST, 


AND THEN PLEASURE.


A MAN who is now very rich, was very poor when he was a boy. When asked how he got riches, he replied, "My father taught me never to play till all my work for the day was finished, and never to spend money till I had earned it. If I had but half an hour's work to do in a day, I must do that the first thing, and in half an hour. After this was done, I was allowed to play; and I could then play with much more pleasure than if I had the thought of an unfinished task before my mind. I early formed the habit of doing everything in its time, and it soon became perfectly easy to do so. It is to this habit that I now owe my prosperity." Let every boy who reads this go and do likewise, and he will meet a similar reward.





MANY persons are puzzled to understand what the terms "fourpenny," 

"sixpenny," and "tenpenny" mean, as applied to nails. "Fourpenny" means four pounds to the thousand nails, " sixpenny" means six pounds to the thousand, and so on. It is an English term, and meant at first "ten-pound" nails (the thousand being understood), but the English clipped it to " ten pun," and from that it degenerated, until "penny" was substituted for "pounds." When a thousand nails weigh less than a pound they are called tacks, brads, etc., and reckoned by ounces.





HERBERT'S WISH. 


"I WISH I could be a man tomorrow," said Herbert Grant. His sisters, Nell and May, laughed, but his mother looked sad, and this is what she said:

"It is a great thing to be a man, but a man has to grow up into manhood from boyhood. It cannot be done in a day, any more than a tree can grow up tall and strong in a short time. 

It is little by little, and the true man keeps on growing all the time, as long as he lives.

"Every time you conquer the wrong, you are so much nearer manhood. 

Every time, you forget self, and do, or say, or think, a noble thing, you are growing. So if you are in a hurry to be a man, remember that this is the only way you can help it along, by trying to be manly every day and all the day."



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THE sweetest words that ever I read 

Are the loving words that the Saviour said, 

"Suffer the children to come to me;" 

Who would have thought of this but he?



POLITENESS TO THE AGED.


"THE only time," said a lady, "that my father was ever very angry with me, was once when I was about eight years old. A feeble, bent old man was tottering down the path with a load of sticks. 'Run and open the gate for him, my dear,' said my father. But I was either slow or willful, and hung back, and was sent home and to bed, although it was broad daylight."

Children, you cannot be too careful to show courtesy to the aged. 




Aunt Belle.









 WORK AND PLAY.



DON'T loiter, boys and girls. When you know what you ought to do, then go about it promptly; work at it diligently, and finish it. Work first and play afterward. Work first and rest afterward. Never dawdle. Is there a garden to be weeded, corn to be hoed, hay to be raked, coal to be brought up, an errand to be done, a lesson to be learned? Make that the first thing, and, if possible; the only thing, until it is finished. Your comfort and your success in life depend very much upon the habits you form in this matter.

You find some people who are always saying they have so much to do, and yet they seem to accomplish very little. They are not comfortable, and they are not successful. Perhaps they have a letter to write, and they worry over it every day for a week, exhausting as much strength in this useless worry and "dread to go about it" each day, as another would in writing and posting half a dozen letters. The successful men railroad presidents, bankers, manufacturers, merchants, farmers are men who have what we call executive ability, or "dispatch." It is the power of forming an accurate judgment quickly, doing a thing, or giving orders for it, at once, and then dismissing it from the mind, so that the next thing may be taken up and dispatched. The hour's duties are done in the sixty minutes, the day's duties within business hours; and then the man may read, ride, talk, sleep, rest, with a mind free from care. If the boys and girls manage their work thus, then they will enjoy their play.



Scholar's Companion.