"I didn't mean to lose my coat, Father. We boys were playing ball, and I threw it down on the ground and forgot all about it until I got home. Then I went back for it and it was gone. Some thief had stolen it, I suppose. I can't help it now, can I?"

"No, Joe, of course you can't," his father answered; "but you are always doing something like this, and I want you to learn to be more careful. It is just the same with your work. Half of it is forgotten, and the other half is not well done. I can't trust you to do anything. You are so forgetful and careless that even your school-mates call you 'Careless Joe.' It is no wonder that your mother and I are discouraged."Mr. and Mrs. Patten were very fond of Joe, who was their only son, and they did everything they could for his happiness; but the boy had grown so careless and selfish that his father and mother were at their wits' end to know what to do with him.

As for Joe, he was a pleasant-faced, good-hearted, jolly boy; but his parents knew that this one bad habit of carelessness would soon spoil him if it were not corrected. They had done everything they could to help him overcome his fault, but he only seemed to grow more careless every day.

Finally Mr. Patten said to his wife, "Let's send Joe to visit Grandfather Knight. He knows how to manage boys pretty well."

Of course Joe was delighted when he heard of the plan, for who ever saw a boy who didn't like to visit his grandfather?

Mrs. Patten wrote to Grandma Knight about Joe's bad habit, which was giving them so much trouble; and the two old people talked it all over and felt sure that they would know what to do when the time came.

"I'll keep the boy so busy that he won't have any time to forget," said his grandfather. "There is always plenty of work on a farm for a good boy."

"He can help me, too," added Grandma. "I'll pay him with cookies;" and she hurried out to the kitchen to make a big jarful of the round sugar cookies that Joe liked best.

Joe was delighted with everything on the farm, and for several days he did very well.

"He isn't such a bad boy after all," Grandpa told Grandma when Joe had gone upstairs to bed one night.

But the very next morning he gave Joe a bucket of grain to feed the hens, and in the afternoon he found the bucket in the barn, still full of grain. When he spoke to Joe about it, the boy answered carelessly, "Oh, yes, I did forget it; but it won't matter much, will it? Hens can't tell the time of day."

"I suppose not," his grandfather replied; "but I don't believe they like to go hungry any better than you do."

The next night Joe went to the pasture to get the cows, and came home driving nine, when he knew very well that his grandfather had ten. He never noticed the difference until Grandpa spoke to him about it, and then he seemed to care so little that the good old man began to think Joe one of the most careless boys he ever saw.

Two or three days later Mr. Knight went to market, leaving Joe to feed the horses at noon. When he reached home at night, the horses had not been fed, and Joe said he didn't think they would mind going without one dinner.Grandma Knight heard this remark, and she decided that it was about time for Joe to have a lesson. When the boy came in to supper, feeling very hungry after a good game of ball, there sat his grandmother knitting a stocking.

He glanced around the kitchen in surprise. "My stomach feels pretty empty," he said; "but I don't see anything to eat. Isn't it almost supper-time?"

"Yes, my boy," his grandmother answered, with a twinkle in her eye, "it is supper-time; but I thought you wouldn't mind going without one supper, so I didn't get any to-night."

Joe frowned and hung his head. He knew very well what his grandmother meant, and things went a little better for a day or two; but the boy soon fell back into his old tricks.

Every morning Joe emptied the ashes from the kitchen stove for his grandmother. Grandpa Knight had told him over and over again never to empty them until they were cool, and always to put them in an iron barrel that stood in the shed.

One morning Joe went as usual to empty the ashes, which happened to have a good many live coals in them. The iron barrel was full, but Joe was in a hurry to get away for a game of ball. He couldn't bother to empty the barrel, and he surely couldn't wait for the ashes to cool, so he tipped them into a wooden box, live coals and all, and ran off to his game.

Grandma Knight was making another big batch of cookies, and it was not long before she began to smell smoke. She looked all around the stove, but she couldn't find anything that was burning.

"It must be some paper I threw into the fire," she said to herself, and she went on with her baking.

But the smell of smoke grew stronger and stronger, and when she came out of the pantry to slip the first pan of cookies into the oven, she could see a thin blue haze in the kitchen.

"The house is on fire!" she cried, and she ran down cellar and upstairs as fast as she could go, opening all the doors and looking in all the closets to find out what was burning.

On her way through the hall she caught up a fire-extinguisher; but she couldn't find a sign of the fire anywhere. At last she ran out through the shed to call Grandpa Knight from the barn, and there was the wooden box blazing merrily, and sending little tongues of hot flame across the floor.

It took only a few minutes to put out the fire with the fire-extinguisher which she still held in her hand; but when Grandpa came into the house a few minutes later, there was Grandma Knight sitting beside the kitchen table, holding a pan of black cookies, with tears running down her wrinkled cheeks.

"I never burned a cooky before in all my life," she said, trying to smile through the tears; "but I couldn't let the house burn down!" and then, all trembling with excitement, she told about the fire in the shed, and the box of hot ashes.

When Careless Joe came home to dinner there was a pan of burned cookies beside his plate, and that afternoon he had a talk with his grandfather which he never forgot.

From that day he really did try to overcome his careless, selfish ways, and to be more thoughtful and manly. He had learned that fire is not to be trifled with, and that a boy must always have his mind on his work.

Why was this boy called "Careless Joe"?

In what way was he careless?

What lesson did his grandmother teach him?What happened which taught him a more serious lesson?

How should ashes be cared for?

What kind of a barrel should they be kept in?

What should be done with rubbish and waste paper?

Ashes should never be kept in wooden barrels or boxes, but in iron barrels or brick bins. There should never be an ash-heap against a fence or near the side of a house. Paper and rubbish should not be mixed with ashes, but kept in a separate barrel.

Cellars and basements should be clean, orderly, and well-lighted. Rubbish is a fire-breeder, and may be the means of destroying your home.