“Come, wife, make up your mind; don’t worry about the children; if I ain’t afraid to leave the farm to John, I’m sure you needn’t be afraid to leave the house to the girls. I’ve no idea of doing with our John as old Peter ---- did with his boy Jim. He never learnt Jim to do anything, or contrive anything, for himself, from the time he was hatched. ‘James,’ the old man would say in the morning, ‘do you go into the barn-yard, and look in the north-east corner, and you will find a hoe; take that hoe, and go down to the western field, and begin to hoe on the acre piece, and stick two punkin seeds in every other hill.’ After the old man died, Jim was good for nothing, because he never knew where to find the hoe; lost his land, and is now working out at day’s work, and is as poor as Lazarus.”