by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You
are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw
you, you have done a good whole day's work in any one day. You do not
very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much merely because
it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of
uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to
you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit.
It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can
keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get
out after they are in.

You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is, that you shall
go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will give you money for
it. Let father and your boys take charge of your things at home, prepare
for a crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best money
wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get; and, to
secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, that for
every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get for your
own labor, either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give
you one other dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a
month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for
your work. In this I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the
lead mines, or the gold mines in California, but I mean for you to go at
it for the best wages you can get close to home in Coles County. Now, if
you will do this, you will be soon out of debt, and, what is better, you
will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But, if
I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep
in as ever. You say you would almost give your place in heaven for
seventy or eighty dollars. Then you value your place in heaven very
cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the seventy or