“Good, Harry—­I’m with you there,” said a voice behind him, and looking around, we saw Mr. Wood standing in the doorway, gazing down proudly at his step-son.

Mr. Harry smiled, and getting up, said, “Won’t you have my chair, sir?”

“No, thank you; your mother wishes us to come to tea.  There are muffins, and you know they won’t improve with keeping.”

They all went to the dining-room, and I followed them.  On the way, Mr. Wood said, “Right on top of that talk of yours, Harry, I’ve got to tell you of another person who is going to Boston to live.”

“Who is it?” said Mr. Harry.

“Lazy Dan Wilson.  I’ve been to see him this afternoon.  You know his wife is sick, and they’re half starved.  He says he is going to the city, for he hates to chop wood and work, and he thinks maybe he’ll get some light job there.”

Mr. Harry looked grave, and Mr. Maxwell said, “He will starve, that’s what he will do.”

“Precisely,” said Mr. Wood, spreading out his hard, brown hands, as he sat down at the table.  “I don’t know why it is, but the present generation has a marvelous way of skimming around any kind of work with their hands, They’ll work their brains till they haven’t got any more backbone than a caterpillar, but as for manual labor, it’s old-timey and out of fashion.  I wonder how these farms would ever have been carved out of the backwoods, if the old Puritans had sat down on the rocks with their noses in a lot of books, and tried to figure out just how little work they could do, and yet exist.”

“Now, father,” said Mrs. Wood, “you are trying to insinuate that the present generation is lazy, and I’m sure it isn’t.  Look at Harry.  He works as hard as you do.”

“Isn’t that like a woman?” said Mr. Wood, with a good-natured laugh.  “The present generation consists of her son, and the past of her husband.  I don’t think all our young people are lazy, Hattie; but how in creation, unless the Lord rains down a few farmers, are we going to support all our young lawyers and doctors?  They say the world is getting healthier and better, but we’ve got to fight a little more, and raise some more criminals, and we’ve got to take to eating pies and doughnuts for breakfast again, or some of our young sprouts from the colleges will go a begging.”

“You don’t mean to undervalue the advantages of a good education, do you, Mr. Wood?” said Mr. Maxwell.

“No, no; look at Harry there.  Isn’t he pegging away at his studies with my hearty approval? and he’s going to be nothing but a plain, common farmer.  But he’ll be a better one than I’ve been though, because he’s got a trained mind.  I found that out when he was a lad going to the village school.  He’d lay out his little garden by geometry, and dig his ditches by algebra.  Education’s a help to any man.  What I am trying to get at is this, that in some way or other we’re running more to brains and less to hard work than our forefathers did.”