AN OLD STORY ILLUSTRATED.

Northern Advocate, 9 April 1887, Page 3

AN OLD STORY ILLUSTRATED.

There is a time-honoured proverb about a shoe lost without a nail, a horse lost for the want of a shoe, a man lost for want of the • horse, and being on an important political errand, his failure led to a disastrous war in which thousands oi men were slain —The spring, thirty or forty rods from the house, was lately drifted over and the regular journeys to it, made several times every day for ;hirty years, were infinitely more troublesome because of the snow. The time wasted in this travel would have purchased a pipe to convey the water, or dug a well annually, to say nothing of the inconvenience and worry. Such neglect of the domestic comfort wears out many a sad mother. —So, too, her enjoyments have been curtailed, and the children's happiness and welfare sacrificedby the thoughtless orworse than useless expenditures of the husband, who has often smoked or drank away the money which would have enlarged tho narrowed circumstances. This matter might be figured up and set down in a sum which would startle many a husband and father. —Rats, living upon the foulest waste, become infested with parasites, within and without, and communicate these to swine. Rats are the hosts of tho measle tapeworm and of the dreaded Trichina spirals, and these parasites are the worst which affect hogs. The losses due to the prevalance of rats about the farm building and feeding pens andl, yards are, far more than ever to be computed because of the secret habits of these vermin. —A dairyman goes to great trouble in successfully building up a herd of good cows, and in housing and feeding them in the best manner; still, he fails of his expectations. Something is wrong, and it is so "very small," so trivial, apparently, as to escape notice. It is possibly in some rough or irregular treatment of the cows; is handling them in such a way as to excite them and injure the milk. The useless, bothersome dogs may be the cause. It may be the want of a thermometer in the milkroom, or a habit of smoking in or near it, or when about the milk; even the foul odour of the breath of an habitual tobacco-chewer may be the little thing which ruins the whole work.