Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1878 — Tools for the Children. [ARTICLE]

Tools for the Children.

Buy tools for your boys, and if you have no boys, buy tools for your girls. It will not harm any girl to learn to drive a nail or saw a board, and do it well, and if she knows how, she will, without doubt, many times find it convenient, no matter what may be her fortune in life. For everyone, it will be a great advantage to cultivate mechanical skill —no one has too much of it. Nothing will be handier or be acceptable on more occasions than to know how to use a few common tools. To begin with, the outfit need not cost over ten dollars, but we will say twenty-five dollars. For this he may buy a square, a jack-plane, a smoothing-plane, a hand-ax, a hammer, a draw-shave, some dividers, a bit stock and half a dozen bits, a half dozen chisels, a bench screw, a small bench he can make, a few files, a whetstone, a handsaw, a rip-saw, a screw-driver. Then with the rest of the twenty-five dollars, he can buy a little wire, an assortment of screws, a few of a kind, an assortment of nails, and a small quantity of pieces of boards of various dimensions. The tools should bo of good quality. In a short time some of these will be lost or broken, but what of it? So is money lost and thrown away. It is a frotitable training for everyone to learn ow to use money properly. To learn, they need to begin early under good instruction. Twenty-five dollars in money may be spent in a thousand ways for things which will do less good than the tools. Although this may seem to some a large amount to pay for tools, twentyfive dollars would be considered a small item as an inheritance for a young man. Then buy the children some tools and they will learn to make playthings for themselves, and be less likely to get into bad company. They will be happier, wiser, better; they will have a stronger attachment for home, and * greater love for and theseare-a priceless fortune Jo. any young man or woman, a fortune which cannot be lost by any failure of banks or depreciation in real estate. Rural New Yorker.