things that nobody else will do. Upon him fall all the odds and
ends, the most difficult things. After everybody else is through, he
has to finish up. His work is like a woman's,--perpetual waiting on
others. Everybody knows how much easier it is to eat a good dinner
than it is to wash the dishes afterwards. Consider what a boy on a
farm is required to do; things that must be done, or life would
actually stop.

It is understood, in the first place, that he is to do all the
errands, to go to the store, to the post office, and to carry all
sorts of messages. If he had as many legs as a centipede, they would
tire before night. His two short limbs seem to him entirely
inadequate to the task. He would like to have as many legs as a
wheel has spokes, and rotate about in the same way. This he
sometimes tries to do; and people who have seen him "turning cart-
wheels" along the side of the road have supposed that he was amusing
himself, and idling his time; he was only trying to invent a new mode
of locomotion, so that he could economize his legs and do his errands
with greater dispatch. He practices standing on his head, in order
to accustom himself to any position. Leapfrog is one of his methods
of getting over the ground quickly. He would willingly go an errand
any distance if he could leap-frog it with a few other boys. He has
a natural genius for combining pleasure with business. This is the
reason why, when he is sent to the spring for a pitcher of water, and
the family are waiting at the dinner-table, he is absent so long; for
he stops to poke the frog that sits on the stone, or, if there is a
penstock, to put his hand over the spout and squirt the water a
little while. He is the one who spreads the grass when the men have
cut it; he mows it away in the barn; he rides the horse to cultivate
the corn, up and down the hot, weary rows; he picks up the potatoes