“Our hours,” said a nature student, “are nothing to the birds. Why, some birds work in the summer nineteen hours a day. Indefatigably they clear the crops of insects.
“The thrush gets up at 2:30 every summer morning. He rolls up his sleeves, and falls to work at once, and he never stops until 9:30 at night. A clean nineteen hours. During that time he feeds his voracious young two hundred and six times.
“The blackbird starts work at the same time as the thrush, but he ‘lays off’ earlier. His whistle blows at 7:30, and during his seventeen-hour day he sets about one hundred meals before his kiddies.
“The titmouse is up and about at three in the morning and his stopping time is nine at night. A fast worker, the titmouse is said to feed his young four hundred and seventeen meals—meals of caterpillar mainly—in the long, hard, hot day.”—Green’s Fruit Grower.
(1597)
INDUSTRY VERSUS IDLENESS
There was a great painter named Hogarth, who painted a series of pictures. The first of the series shows two lads starting in life as apprentices under the same master. They are about the same age, are equally clever, and have the same prospect of getting on. Yet in the other pictures, one apprentice, whose name is Tom Idle, is shown to neglect his work for bad company of every kind, gradually sinking from idleness into every crime. The other apprentice, Frank Goodchild, is depicted as always industrious and attentive to his business, and becoming prosperous and rich. Another picture shows that Tom has sunk into poverty and misery; another picture shows that Frank has become a great merchant. One of the last pictures shows Tom in the hands of the constables, brought before Alderman Goodchild, who is now high sheriff, and who is pained and distrest in recognizing his old fellow apprentice in the prisoner at the bar.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”
(1598)
INEBRIETY, INCURABLE
Is the drunkard curable? Dr. Gill, a British expert, in a recent report says that mental recoveries in a considerable number never go beyond a certain point, and he classes nearly 50 per cent of his patients as higher-grade imbeciles, while many others are weak-minded and unable to work—perhaps congenital neurasthenics. He goes on to say: