PART II.

IT was a January night, very cold. The snow which was always on the mountains looked down on the snow which sometimes melted from the valleys, and seemed to smile at it in a hard, cold way, for supposing itself to be of any importance at all. The white cross made by the peculiar shape of the mountains, and the action of the sun on the snow, gleamed in the moonlight more beautiful than usual to Teddy Simpson, as he pushed back the overcoat several times too large for him, thrust his hands into his pockets, and leaned against the snow-covered hill to think. Hundreds of stars twinkled down upon him, brighter and more filled with jewels than they ever are in any other sky, I think; but Teddy’s thoughts were not of them.

He was waiting for the teamster whose route lay along this mountain side, and who always brought the mail from the distant settlement, as well as any supplies or packages which the miners might need. Not that Teddy expected any mail! Bless your heart, he had never received a letter in his life, nor even a paper through the mails. To have done so even once would have almost taken his breath away. Yet he was deeply interested in the teamster’s wagon; as he stood still in the moonlight to think, there was an eager look in his eyes, and he listened for the sound of the cracking whip with such an air of expectancy as his face did not often wear. The fact is, Teddy Simpson had planned a wonderful surprise for his mother which his friend the teamster was helping him to carry out. Very poor they were, he and his mother; she cooked for the miners, and washed for them, and mended their clothes, but the miners, too, were poor, and could pay but little. The truth is, the people who lived and worked in this beautiful, desolate region were all poor together. Teddy had had plans, beautiful plans, for the Christmas three weeks behind him, and had failed in them. He and his mother knew all about Christmas; had not she hung up her stocking every year of her life until she was a great girl fifteen years old? Teddy never had, because Santa Claus seemed never to get so far West as where he lived; but while the father was alive Teddy always had at least one Christmas present, if it was nothing but a picture cut from some of the illustrated papers of the tourists, and framed by his mother with some bits of bright paper laid away for such purposes. Teddy had been a man grown now for two years—at least he felt like one—with no time for such trifles; but he had longed to make a bright Christmas for the miner’s family with five little children, their nearest neighbors. If his mother had not had a sick day when he was obliged to do her work as well as he could, and in doing it wasted some of the material and lost a good deal of time, he thought he should have accomplished it. As it was, he could not get the Christmas treat ready for them, but promised himself that another year he would be on hand. Then he had turned his thoughts to a surprise for his mother. That, too, had been a Christmas plan, but failing then, he resolved that he would not wait for the next season. The surprise was nothing more nor less than a half-pound of the best tea which the silver half-dollar he had sent by the teamster could supply. The poor little overworked mother was very fond of tea; he had often heard her say that a good cup of it after a hard day’s work seemed to rest her as nothing else would; but since the father died, she had bravely put it aside as one of the luxuries which they could not now afford.

If there were time to tell you how long and hard Teddy had worked for that extra half-dollar, never taking a cent for it from the regular wages of the day which he earned as his share of the family support, you would not wonder that he had grown almost feverish in his anxiety as the weeks went on, lest he should fail in having the right amount. He had accomplished it, and the day had come for the teamster to go on his fortnightly trip, and the day and evening had arrived for his return, and here at a bend in the road Teddy waited for him.

Away in the distance on the still frosty air broke at last the sound of a cheery whistle, and Teddy held himself still and listened. Jim Coon, the teamster, was a friend of his, and Teddy did not believe he would whistle if anything so cruel had happened as that the supply grocer had been out of tea.

“Halloo!” said Jim, as he came with a flourish around the bend in the snowy road, “waitin’, be you? I thought it was a ghost froze stiff to the rocks. Climb up here, and we’ll be home in a jiffy. Beats all what a hurry this team has been in this afternoon—all owing to you, I s’pose. O, yes! I got it, safe and sound; the very best kind of tea ever brought to these parts, Joe Derrick says, and he put in a good big half-pound of it, I’m witness to that.”

Then Teddy drew a long breath, and immediately the longing which he had kept in the background came to the front; also the problem over which he had been studying for weeks. Wouldn’t it on the whole have been better to have gotten a quarter of a pound of tea and spent the rest of the money in sugar? mother did so like a little sugar with her tea. But then, a quarter of a pound seemed such a very little bit, and the winter was long in this mountain region, and there was no telling when he would have a chance to get any more. But he wished, O, so much! that he knew how to get just a little sugar; that would make the present complete.

“I got somethin’ else,” said Jim, with a curious note of suppressed excitement in his tones; “somethin’ for you.”

“For me?” echoed Teddy, amazed.

“Yes, sir, for you; Teddy Simpson is the name on the box, as large as life.”

“On the box!” In his astonishment and excitement all that Teddy could do was to echo Jim’s words.

“Yes, sir, on the box; a good-sized box, and as heavy as though it had been stuffed with lead. Come by freight; got there yesterday just about an hour before I drove into town; come all the way from New York State, too.”

After that, the quarter of a mile between Teddy Simpson and home seemed endless. A box by freight for him! What would mother think, and the neighbors! Above all, what could be in the box?

Before it was half-unpacked the question became what was not in it? Two suits of clothes for Teddy, two new dresses for his mother—or dresses quite as good as new—a warm, bright shawl, and a fur hood. Shoes, and stockings, and socks, and mittens, and oh! books, and papers, and pictures, and more books. Was ever anything so wonderful? Then there were toys—dolls, and balls, and tops, and wooden dogs, and wax cats, and cloth elephants—and some little bits of dresses and sacks which could fit only the children further down the mountain. Teddy felt this, even before he discovered that these were all labeled, “For Teddy to give to his friends, the little Perkinses.” Moreover, there was a little leather bag in the very bottom of the box, drawn together by a bright cord and securely tied, which when opened was found to contain seventeen bright silver dollars, the gifts of the cousins and aunts and uncles for Teddy to use as he thought best. Do you want to know what he thought of first? A whole pound of sugar to go with that half-pound of tea which was still lying snugly in his overcoat pocket, where Teddy meant to leave it until the next morning. Such a box as that, and a half pound of tea in the bargain, he considered altogether too much for his mother’s nerves in one evening.

Such a wonderful morning as it was—such a wonderful day, indeed! The Perkinses were hopelessly wild all day, and their poor little half-discouraged mother was not much better.

The next time teamster Jim went over the snow road between the mountains he carried a fat little letter written in Teddy’s best round hand—and he was by no means a bad writer; his mother had taught him. In this letter he described to the cousins just how he stood by the rocks and waited for Jim Coon’s team, just how surprised he was, just how the box was opened, just what he and his mother exclaimed as long as they had any breath for exclaiming, just how the Perkinses acted the next day—at least as well as language would do it—and altogether wrote so surprising a letter that Hortense said, drawing a long sigh of delight: “Isn’t it lovely? Hasn’t this been a long Christmas? It is better than the Christmas-tree a great deal, isn’t it?”

“It is the jolliest Christmas I ever had,” said Holly.

“And it has taught us how to have some more jolly ones,” said Tom.

As for Tom’s father, he said: “That boy Teddy is a smart fellow; he ought to have an education. There ought to be a good school out there. Why wouldn’t that be a good place for us to send Richard Winston? He would be a grand fellow to work among just such people.”

So the “long Christmas” is in a fair way to grow longer, you see, for every cousin in the three homes is interested in Tom’s father’s idea, and so is Richard Winston.

PANSY.

SOMETHING FOR MAMMA.

YOU want it for Christmas, of course; and you are a little girl who has very few pennies of your own to spend; and mamma, like other mammas, thinks that something which her daughter has made with her own hands is of far more value than an article, however fine, bought at a store. You have been disconsolate for several days because there are so few “things” which you know how to make, and because you have so little money with which to buy material. Take heart, my dear, there are happy surprises in store for mamma.

How much money have you for this particular gift? “Twenty-five cents,” and you blush and are troubled, and say in your heart, “Just as though anything worth having could be made for twenty-five cents!” Why, my dear, that is enough and to spare. Did you notice the table mats yesterday at dinner? They are made of bits of oiled wood ingeniously put together, and in their prime were pretty, and rather expensive; but they are sadly worn now—so much so, indeed, that Hannah declared only yesterday that she did not know what to do with the things; they were so much worn that she could not wash them any more. She knew what she would like to do with them; if she had her way she would “chuck” them into the fire.

What I propose is, that you plan your Christmas present so that Hannah can have the pleasure of doing just that thing.

What you want is a ball of macremé cord, of a delicate creamy tint, price fifteen cents, and a ball of candle wicking for three cents, or possibly five, though it ought not to be if your merchants are up with city prices. Positively that is all. O, yes! a crochet needle, large size; but that of course you have; or if not, I am almost certain that mamma, or better still grandma, will make you a present of one, because of the many useful things you can make with it; still, if you wish to be entirely independent, why, buy one, for five cents surely (a large price), and you are ready.

Hold the end of candle wicking over your left forefinger and crochet the macremé cord over it with what is known as the long stitch; it is very rapid work after you have once mastered the stitch, and before you realize it, you will have a long, long rope of creamy cord. Do not pull hard on the crochet cord, but let the work lie up loose and fluffy. When you think you have enough done to experiment with, get your neat little work box, thread a needle with strong cotton—number thirty being a very good size—curl the beginning of your cord into a graceful circle, and take firm stitches on the under side to hold it there; then another coil, and another, sewed neatly and firmly, and continue until you have a table mat large enough round to take the vegetable dishes, or the soup tureen, or whatever you wish to set on it. Then cut off the supply, fasten the end firmly, and finish the whole with a pretty crocheted scallop all around. Just compare that mat with the slippery, stained wood one with frayed edges! You admire it now, but what will it be when Hannah has washed and starched it until it holds its shape as firmly as the wooden one, and yet is flexible and graceful? More of them? Certainly, an entire set, varying in size to match the uses to which they are to be put.

Have I made a mistake? Are your vegetable dishes all oval? Well, my dear, your table water pitcher is not, I am sure. Just use this first one for it, and start your next sewing with an oval shape instead of a circle; it must be a very small oval for the beginning—not over three quarters of an inch in length—else your mat will grow too long for its width. Your best plan would be to experiment a little. Lay the work loosely, confined by a mere basting stitch, and see whether, when the mat has grown as long as your paper pattern, it will be of the proper width. You will not find the planning difficult; it merely needs the patience and carefulness which I feel sure you will bestow; and the result will be an entire nest of pretty and useful mats which will be a delightful surprise to mamma on Christmas morning, and a comfort to her as well as to Hannah throughout the year. Try it, and be sure to let me hear how you succeeded.

PANSY.

ETHEL CARLISLE’S FACE.

(_Character Studies._)

I CAN see her now as she looked to me that winter morning wrapped in furs, ready all but her fur cap to brave the frosty air, when she held up in triumph a spray of brilliant bloom, and said: “Look, Aunt Myra, did you ever see anything prettier than that from a conservatory? And they blossomed in my window-seat!” I was not her auntie, but was so old and intimate a friend of the family that the children had adopted me.

“Hasn’t Ethel a beautiful face?” I said to Miss Margaret, another friend of the family, who, with myself, was a guest at the Carlisles’. “It is so very bright. Did you notice what a peculiar brightness there is to her eyes when she smiles? And she has a lovely smile.”

Miss Margaret looked grave, almost troubled. “It is a sweeter face than it will be in a few years, I am afraid,” she said, shaking her head, which already had threads of silver in it. Miss Margaret was a wise sweet woman, not given to croaking, so I waited somewhat anxiously to hear her words. “Ethel is cultivating habits which will spoil her face,” she said; “I have not been here before for two years, and I notice a very decided change in it since then. She was one of the sweetest little children I ever knew, but if you watch through only one day you will discover what I mean. Unless something occurs to change her habits, there will be another spoiled face in the world in a few years.”

I had been in the house but a day, and had been absent from the country for more than two years, so I knew very little of the younger Carlisles. Ethel had always been my favorite, and it made me sad and a trifle annoyed to hear Miss Margaret’s words. I felt sure she must have grown over particular.

Of course, with such a warning, it would have been impossible not to have watched. Long before night I knew what Miss Margaret meant.

“Where in the world is my French Grammar?” I heard Ethel’s voice, with a very sharp note in it, rasping through the hall. “I left it on the dining-room table while I ran out to speak to Nellie, and somebody has taken it. I declare, I cannot lay down a thing for a second and find it again. I do wish Ann could be taught to let my books alone!”

“Indeed, Miss Ethel, I have not touched a book this morning; I have not dusted in the dining-room yet.” This was Ann’s voice; then Ethel’s, by no means sweetened: “That is perfect nonsense, Ann; I left it here not two minutes ago, and now it is gone. What do you think could have become of it? It couldn’t walk off without hands.”

“Ethel!” from Mrs. Carlisle, in a reproving tone, “do not speak so to Ann, daughter; she has not been in the dining-room since breakfast.”

“Well, but, mother, my French Grammar is gone that I just laid there, and the bell is ringing; I shall be late, and I think it is just too bad!” There was an ugly frown all over the fair forehead, and a sharp and at the same time whining tone to the voice which had been so sweet but a little while before.

“Ethel,” called her older sister Nannie from the hall above, “here is your book; you left it on the hat rack a few minutes ago.”

Away went Ethel without a word of explanation to mother or to Ann, and we heard her voice, still sharp, saying to Nannie, “Why couldn’t you have told me before, and not kept me hunting half the morning?”

I heard the mother sigh, and was sorry for her, and glad that the alcove curtains shaded me from view, and that I had a book in my hand and could appear not to have heard.

Ethel came home at lunch time, and was out of sorts with the soup because it tasted of onions, and with the squash because it had been peppered. She said she wished anybody ever consulted her tastes, and she would just as soon think of puffing tobacco smoke in the face of people as of eating onions for them to smell afterwards. She scolded her brother Tom for forgetting the music he was to call for; and when he said he was very sorry, and it was because he had so many important errands for his father that he forgot it, she tossed her head and said sharply, “Oh! you needn’t explain; of course you would forget what I wanted; I’m of no consequence.”

In short, with my eyes opened as they had been by Miss Margaret I could not help seeing that Ethel spoiled the sweetness of almost every room she entered that day, and complained of unkindness or of discomforts at every turn. Yet at family worship, when she played,

“Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,”

and led the singing with a very sweet voice, she looked like an angel. It broke my heart to hear her, not ten minutes afterwards, scolding Baby Frank for overturning her spool basket. “You are just a little nuisance!” she said, sharp-voiced again; “I think mamma ought to whip you. Well, mamma, I do,” in response to a reproving look from her mother; “you are just spoiling him, I think.”

“Is it possible that this is a fair specimen of that child’s days?” I asked Miss Margaret, as we went down the hall together.

“I am afraid it is,” said Miss Margaret. “She is learning to frown and fret over the veriest trifles, and to answer even her mother rudely, as you noticed just now. How many years of such living will it take to utterly spoil the pretty face? Isn’t it strange that a young girl who believes herself such an ardent admirer of beauty, should deliberately undertake to spoil the lovely work of art which God gave her to take care of?”

MYRA SPAFFORD.

ORIGIN OF A NEW ENGLAND INDUSTRY.

IN 1798 Betsey Metcalf, of Dedham, Mass., made a bonnet out of oat straw, fashioning it after an English bonnet then very fashionable. She flattened the straw with the blade of her scissors, split it with her thumb nail, braided it into the requisite number of strands and bleached it by holding it over the vapor of burning sulphur. She afterward taught the young ladies of her vicinity how to do it, and thus laid the foundation of the extensive business now carried on in straw hats in New England.—_Selected._

MOTHER DUNLAP’S STORY.

IF my father and mother had been at home it would never have happened, but they started in the morning as soon as they could see the road for my Aunt Margaret’s, taking Emeline with them. I remember just how I felt when I saw them drive from our gate with Emeline sitting between them; it seemed so terrible, somehow, to think of her sitting in my place, because I was the one who always sat between father and mother. But Cousin Emeline was Aunt Margaret’s little girl, and word had come that Aunt Margaret was very sick, and that Emeline must be brought home as fast as possible; so of course they started, though there was every sign of a storm, Uncle Peter said, and he hardly ever made a mistake in the weather. He was our “signal service” in those days. Cousin Edward was at our house, too; he was Uncle Edward’s son, and always spent his short vacation with us, because his folks lived too far away for him to go home. He was thirteen years old, and thought he knew all there was to know in life. He was a smart fellow, and would have been real nice if he had not felt so sure of it himself. Father and mother had not been gone an hour when he began to plan to drive to town to the New Year festival which was to be held in one of the churches, and take me along. Kirke said everything in the world to hinder us from going; he thought it was going to storm.

“Who’s afraid of a few snowflakes?” said Edward. “I want Nannie to have a cheery time for New Year’s; it is dreadful dull for her with Auntie and Uncle both gone.”

Kirke was a boy who did chores at our house for his board, and went to school; we lived two miles nearer the schoolhouse than his mother did, and they were pretty poor, and Kirke earning his board away from home helped them a good deal. We all loved Kirke; he was a good sensible boy, and stood at the head of his classes in school. But I did not approve of him that day; I wanted to go to town. I was a silly little thing in those days, not afraid of anything; I laughed at the storm just as Edward did.

“It will be more than a few flakes,” Kirke said, shaking his head gravely; “I think we are going to have the worst storm of the season.” Then Edward began to make fun of him—call him Uncle Peter, and ask what kind of a winter it was forty years ago; because Uncle Peter was always going back to old times and telling stories about the weather. Kirke kept good-natured, and laughed with me over Edward’s speeches, but for all that he did not stop trying to keep us from going to town.

“Look here,” he said, “I have a tip-top plan for this afternoon. Mrs. Baker gave me a jug of molasses and some splendid ears of pop-corn to take home: suppose you and Nannie walk out home with me, and we will pop some corn, and make candy with hickory nuts in? We’ve got a bushel of nuts stored away in the garret, and we’ll have no end of fun. Nannie can stay all night—she has done it before, you know—and sleep with my sister Mary, and you and I will turn in with little Billy up in the attic; he likes company.”

The picture looked quite inviting to me; I had often been out to Kirke’s house, for my father and mother liked their family very much, and were always willing to have me play with their children.

But Edward was not to be persuaded. “No, you don’t, old fellow,” he said; “candy and nuts are first-rate things for any night in the year but New Year’s; a fellow needs something extra then. I’ve set my heart on seeing the festival tables, and watching them give out the prizes, and I’m going; my uncle said three days ago that I could.”

“But he did not know that it was going to snow,” Kirke said, more and more anxious. “Really, Edward, I do not think Mr. and Mrs. Baker would like to have you take Nannie out when it looks so much like a storm.” Then Edward got angry and told Kirke to mind his own business, that we were not left in his charge at least, and that he should do as he liked; and Kirke was to remember that Mr. and Mrs. Baker were his own uncle and aunt, and that he might be supposed to know as much about what they would like as a stranger could. Kirke said no more, but he looked very much troubled. I was half-disposed to give up the plan, but Edward laughed at me. The good-natured housekeeper in whose care we were left never paid much attention to the weather, and made no objection to my going. I don’t know but that it would have come out all right even then, if Edward’s pride had not got the upper hand. He took a notion to drive to town by the old road.

“O, don’t!” I urged; “you do not know that way at all, and Uncle Peter said this morning that the wind last night must have drifted the snow on the old road.”

“Poh!” said Edward, “Uncle Peter is an old croaker; he’s an old man, Nannie, and always makes mountains out of molehills. The wind will be at our backs part of the time on the old road, and I’m going that way. What if I have not driven it? The horse won’t get lost, if you think I will.”

Well, we started, and for the first ten minutes everything was right; then we began to come to drifts, and I was dreadfully scared. We almost turned over two or three times. I kept squealing out, and that provoked Edward. “Keep still,” he would say; “I did not know you were such a little coward.” To make matters worse, it began to snow harder than I ever saw it before, and grew so dark that we could hardly see our way. We had been riding a good while, and ought to have reached the town, but no sign of a town was to be seen.

After a while Edward made up his mind that he must have taken the wrong turn, and said he was going back a little way to see if he had. He tried to turn around, but the wind blew so that the snow blinded his eyes; and it was not a good place for turning around, any way. The first thing I knew over went the sleigh, and I was in a snowdrift! That was not the worst of it, either; the runner of the sleigh snapped as if it had been a pipe-stem. Good old Jim stood still, fortunately. But there we were with a driving storm, with a broken sleigh! I do not think I was ever so glad of anything in my life as I was to hear Kirke’s voice above the roar of the wind.

“What in the world are you doing there?” he said, bounding along over drifts of snow. “Is Nannie hurt? If she is not all right never mind anything else. Oh! the sleigh is broken. How came you to be on this road? This is not the way to town; it is an old wood road that was used early in the winter, but it is all snowed up; you could not have got much farther; you ought to have turned to the right a mile below here; I thought you knew the way. Now I’ll tell you what will have to be done. Nannie must go to our house—it is less than a quarter of a mile from here—and I’ll get a rope and tie up that sleigh somehow, enough to get it and Jim back to the stable; then I’ll tell your folks that you are going to stay at our house all night—shall I?”

He seemed to have forgotten how disagreeably Edward had spoken to him, and was just as nice as could be. But Edward’s cheeks were pretty red. “No, sir,” he said firmly; “I started out to have my own way and ought to have the benefit of it. If you will take Nannie to your house I’ll get this rig home myself and take care of Jim; it is not fair that you should lose your New Year’s fun to help me out. I’ll foot it out to your house if it is not too late after I have been to see Mr. Ormstead about mending this sleigh; but I’m not going to let you go for me a single step.”

No amount of coaxing could turn him from his purpose. So at last Kirke, after helping him to tie up the runner with some twine which they found in their pockets, tucked me under his arm, and we marched off to their little house.

Their kitchen was the cleanest, brightest, cheeriest place you ever saw, and the molasses taffy was splendid. I had a lovely time; but there was such a dreadful storm that Edward could not get back that night, and Jim had lamed himself somehow in stumbling through deep drifts; and it cost four dollars to mend the sleigh, which Edward had to pay, because my father said he did not believe in boys having their own way and not being willing to take the consequences. To be sure he gave the money back again, and more too, when Edward’s next birthday came. But I don’t think Edward ever forgot the lesson. I ought to have been punished too, for I pretended to agree with Edward, even when I thought he was foolish; but some way I slipped through the trouble and had all the pleasure, just as girls often do, I think.

“Mother,” said little Cathie Dunlap, “father’s middle name is Kirke; did he have anything to do with the nice boy who took care of you?”

“Why, yes,” said Mother Dunlap, laughing, “come to think of it, his full name was William Kirke Dunlap.”

MYRA SPAFFORD.

HUNGER AND THIRST.

THERE is a story of a little boy who was very fond of angling, and who one day told his grandfather that he had caught a fish as large as a horse.

“Look here, Tom,” said the old man, “don’t you know it’s wrong for a little boy like you to tell such a big untruth? You are not six years, are you?”

“No,” said Tommy; “I am only five, and I’ll not do it again. After this I’m going to tell only little bits of fish stories.”

That boy often reminds one of people who talk about being “temperate” and “moderate” in the use of things which they ought to let alone altogether. A little glass of strong drink, a little cigar, are just as certainly wrong as a little untruth.

But how can we know what is good or bad for the body? The answer is, that our body itself will tell us. The body has a conscience as well as the soul. Put your hand into a potful of warm water, and your hand will at once let you know if the water is too hot. Go out sleigh-riding in a light straw hat on a cold winter morning, and your ears will soon ask for a warmer cover. After a laborer has been hard at work for eight or ten hours, his body will ask for rest. Make a child sit down in a chair without moving for six hours, and its body will ask for exercise. Our body soon lets us know if a coat or a shoe is too tight, or if a burden is too heavy. And it can just as certainly be relied upon to warn us against unwholesome food. It is true that we can silence that voice of our body’s conscience. After a man has swallowed a good many glasses of bad drink or smoked a cigar every morning for a couple of weeks, he at last gets “used to it,” as we call it; his nature gets changed, and at last he is unable to let such things alone. But at the first trial our sense of taste will plainly warn us against unwholesome food and drink. Before an apple is ripe it tastes sour. The taste of over-ripe or spoiled fruit gets more and more disagreeable.

An Italian naturalist, during his travels in Southern Africa, noticed that a little pet monkey of his never made a mistake in choosing its food, and could tell poisonous herbs and berries from good ones the moment he tasted them. The traveler made that little creature his kitchen master, as he called it, and always let it try a bit of every kind of food that was offered to him for sale. “If Jocko ate a spoonful of honey and stretched out his hand for more,” he writes, “I was satisfied that it was worth buying; if the little chap grinned and flung the sample away, I felt sure that the bees must have gathered their honey from poisonous flowers. Jocko never made mistakes in such things, and that our own people blundered so often might be explained by the fact that we have blunted our sense of taste with strong drink and hot spices.”

A boy who has been brought up on perfectly wholesome food can tell injurious things almost as quick as that little monkey. He will dislike the taste of sharp pepper sauces, of pickles, of strong cheese, of spoiled meat, and will not be apt to mistake a bitter swamp berry for a huckleberry.

Our stomach also lets us know when we should stop eating. In that case, too, it is not safe to disregard the warnings of our bodily conscience. If a boy keeps eating, just to while time away, after he feels that he has had enough, and after his stomach has asked him again and again to stop, his nature at last changes, and he wants to be stuffing himself all the time. I knew a little chap of ten years who seemed to think it a pity to lose a chance for gorging himself, and who had to be watched like a tricky cat to keep him from slipping into his mother’s pantry and helping himself to all the good things in sight. On his way to school he would stop to buy a package of peanuts or pick up a pocketful of apples on the outside of an orchard, and when he came home for dinner he ate away as if nothing had happened. All his schoolmates called him “Glutton Joe.”

Such gluttons are apt to think that they are getting more fun out of life than other people. The truth is, that they hardly ever know an hour of real happiness. They feel dull and weary; they become too sluggish to play; they take no interest in their studies, and drop a new book or new paper after a short look at the pictures; they would rather not know the end of a pretty story than go to the trouble of reading it through. They feel drowsy as soon as the weather gets a little warm, but when they go to sleep their rest is broken by ugly dreams. Glutton Joe had no friends; he was so cross and lazy that nobody wanted him for a playmate.

An old fisherman once told me that it was worth while going out sailing in bad, chilly weather, just for the fun of getting home again and taking a rest in a warm chimney-corner, and I have often thought that many people would find it worth while to fast once in a while, when they begin to complain that they cannot enjoy their meals. After a day’s exercise in the woods and mountains the plainest food tastes well. A supper of bread, milk and huckleberries tastes better to the poor Tennessee mountain boy, who has been out herding cows all day, than a banquet of thirty dishes tastes to a rich merchant who has not yet digested his last meal. There is no danger in an occasional fast, though some people seem to think it a misfortune to miss one of their three daily meals. There was a time when rich and poor thought it enough to eat one good meal a day. The old Romans and Greeks ate a biscuit and perhaps half a handful of dried fruit in the morning, and then did not eat again till they had finished their day’s work, when they took a bath, changed their dress, and then sat down to a good supper. An Indian hunter thinks nothing of going a day without any food at all. A few years ago an American physician thought it worth while to try how long a man could fast without hurting himself. People thought he was crazy, and told him he would kill himself in less than a week. He made no reply, and his friends changed their opinion when he had fasted forty days and nights. Few of those friends would have cared to try their own pluck in that manner, but they would certainly have been ashamed to complain of an accident that might lose them a dinner and oblige them to eat their principal meal in the evening.

But though there can be no harm in a day’s fast, it is never safe to suffer for want of drinking water. The same doctor who passed nearly six weeks without a mouthful of food, took a sip of cold lemonade every few hours, and it is a curious fact that in warm weather a glass of water served with our dinner is by far the most important part of the meal. Hunger, or what we call a “good appetite,” often stops after the mealtime has passed without a chance of getting a mouthful of food, but thirst cannot be put off in that way, and becomes at last so intolerable that a starved traveler, after a three days’ journey in the desert, would give a wagon-load of food for a drink of cold water.

FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D.

WOULD AND SHOULD.

A PUPIL in a quiet boarding-school in —— displayed some time since no small degree of industry in collecting autographs of distinguished persons. The late James Russell Lowell was one of the number addressed. The address to him was in substance: “I would be very much obliged for your autograph.” The response contained a lesson that many besides the ambitious pupil have not learned: “Pray do not say hereafter ‘I would be obliged.’ If you would be obliged, be obliged and be done with it. Say ‘I should be obliged,’ and oblige yours truly, JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.”—_Selected._

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

YOU see it is most beautiful to the eye, though you Pansies of the great cities may think some of your churches quite as handsome. But none of them has such a history. This church was founded—started, as some would say—more than a thousand years ago! Now where’s your pretty “meeting-house” which was built only last year?

Old King Siebert, a Saxon, built Westminster Abbey, and many of the Saxons really believed that the Apostle Peter dedicated it, though Peter had died nearly one thousand years before!

However, this building is not the very same that King Siebert put up. That one stood several hundred years, when Edward, “the Confessor,” as he was called, rebuilt it. Two hundred years later King Henry the Third enlarged it, making it look about as it now is.

For years and years the English kings and queens have been crowned here, and buried, too, nearly all. Here the great ones of the nation are buried—Shakespeare, Milton, Ben Jonson, Wordsworth, and many more, the poets in the “Poets’ Corner.”

Under the coronation (crowning) chair is the “Stone of Scone,” which some actually say is the very one Jacob laid his head upon when he dreamed! However that be, many kings have sat upon it when they were crowned.

Of course you will search out the “Jerusalem Chamber” when you visit Westminster. The Presbyterian Church began in this chamber. Here, too, the Bible was revised (re-translated from the Hebrew and Greek).

“Why do they call it the ‘Jerusalem Chamber’?”

Probably because its windows came from that old city, and the Cedar of Lebanon forms the wainscoting.

So this wonderful building has served many purposes besides that of a church. For some hundred years the House of Commons (something like our House of Representatives) made laws here, especially laws to secure the liberties of the people.

So you see this building is something like Faneuil Hall of Boston and Independence Hall of Philadelphia.

What a book Westminster Abbey could make if it only could write. But somehow, like Nineveh and such places, it will rise up in the Judgment; then what will it say of the people who have had to do with it?

L.

A NEW YEAR’S TRIP.

TO Africa! Yes; here it is ’92, January 1, early in the morning, and we are in the sleigh, and away we glide over the snow to Africa, to return to-night.

“Twenty thousand miles in twelve hours, pooh! and going to hot Africa in a sleigh!”

Suppose, then, we just think we are there, and we are there to all intents and purposes.

“Well, here goes; I think I’m in South Africa at the mouth of some diamond hole (tunnel), January 1, ’92. Of course I’m there picking up diamonds to bring back for New Year’s presents, eh?”

Indeed you—the best part of you, your soul, your thought—are. Just wake up your imagination, and it’s about the same. Now you step down into the dark hole. Deeper you descend, as down a steep hill, to the very bottom—eight hundred feet or more—through fields full of diamonds.

See, just before you dim forms. They are naked natives digging. They fill up the small car of dirt, dotted with the precious stones, and away it goes up and out. It dumps its load and returns. It’s a dirty, dreadful place. Every little while there’s a roar; the ground shakes. There’s dynamite blasting to loosen the earth.

Hurry out now; the tunnel may cave in, and you’ll be choked, as were several hundred a few years ago.

Here we are outside. See, the ground is two feet deep with the earth carted out. They are harrowing it, or the rain is falling upon it. It is crumbling fine. Ah! see the shining treasures. But look out! Don’t put one into your pocket without permission; you are watched.

Now back we come—in thought. There! have not we had one of the brightest New Year’s?

Thus brighten up your imagination and you need not be bothering yourself forever with cars and steamboats and ships and seasickness and such things to see foreign lands. With a good book of travels or newspaper you can just trip over there—to Europe, Asia and Africa—in a moment, and see all you can carry back in a few more moments, and be home to tea the same day to show (tell) your treasures!

L.

ON A VISIT TO GERMANY.

HERE we are. It is midwinter—

“In Maine or New Hampshire or Canada, I guess.”

Guess again, you mistaken Pansy.

“Norway, then.”

Nor Norway, but just simply in Germany.

“Such snow-storms in Germany?”

Yes, and that miss with umbrella and fat face trudging on is—

“Fräulein, I dare say. Isn’t that, or something like it, the name of all the German girls?”

Wouldn’t that mix things in a family of six girls? Think of a mother calling each one Fräulein!

But that girl is no other than Bessie—

“Bessie a German girl? Never heard one called that in all my life.”

Who said she was a German girl? Can’t one be in Germany and not be a German? Do you expect to turn into one as soon as you get to—“Sweet Bingen on the Rhine,” or Frankfort? Frankfort, once the home of the great poet, Goethe, some of whose sayings it may make your dear head ache to understand. Frankfort, once a free city, as free from any king or great ruler as—the United States is of Mexico; a queer, bright old city—

“Bessie! Bessie! what about Bessie? Won’t she be lost in Frankfort? Who is she, any how?”

A Pansy, quite likely from Boston, by that name, on a visit to Germany. She will spend a few months in Frankfort, studying German and seeing the German sights, among them Luther’s house.

“But you do not explain what Bessie is doing out in a Frankfort snow-storm.”

Maybe she is after red cheeks; she left Boston looking pale enough. Her mamma thought a sea voyage and a few months in France and as many more in Germany would color her face again with rose tints as formerly. You see how she has improved. Now the Christmas festival of Frankfort begins, lasting three days. There will be trees and trees, and so much more that paper can hardly hold it or ink write it.

Bessie is on her way to the festival to see the German of it with Yankee eyes.

L.

A DELIGHTFUL WRITER.

WHEN you go to Edinburgh, Scotland—as some day go you may—you must not fail to visit one of the finest structures there, the monument of Sir Walter Scott.

Before you go it would be well to read some of his charming books: Ivanhoe, Old Mortality, Tales of a Grandfather, etc.

The Scottish folks are justly proud of Sir Walter. Few nations have produced so delightful a writer. So no wonder this grand monument was built. It is a Gothic edifice, the top of the spire of which is two hundred feet from the ground. The lower part is open, and here is a fine marble statue of Sir Walter, his favorite dog by his side.

Seventy-five thousand dollars have been put into this edifice! Many of you would be satisfied with a house costing one thousand. Young Walter Scott did not expect to become so great a man when he first took up his pen.

L.

A HERO.

AT Fort Smith, Ark., is Mrs. Edith M. Degen. She knows a great deal about Mr. “In.” If you will write her a letter saying you want to know something more about him, and if you will put in your letter a postal card addressed to yourself, it will soon get back to you with writing on the other side which you will like to read. Try it.

Now this man is really Mr. Lewis F. Hadley of Massachusetts. He has been many years among the Indians, studying their Sign Language.

You see the different tribes of Indians have different mouth or spoken languages, as do white people. To understand each other’s speech they must have an interpreter to give its meaning; but they all seem to have about the same sign speech; by using this the different tribes can understand each other when they meet.

You know the deaf and dumb talk with their hands. So with the Indians of different tribes when they can’t understand each other’s speech.

Here is a specimen of the sign language:

Well, Mr. Hadley has been mastering these signs, and now, after many years’ hard study, you see he can write it.

“What for?”

To spread knowledge among the Indians. To give them the Gospel—the blessed good news about the Lord who came and died for them.

“But has not the Bible been put into Indian for them to read, and don’t the missionaries preach to them in their own language?”

Yes, indeed; but don’t you see that for each one of the many tribes it may be necessary to have just the Bible and missionary that each can understand? But if all the tribes now know this one Sign Talk, then all can read the Lord’s Prayer, and any other part of the Bible, if put in this sign talk. And all the more so because every one can understand a thing better if he can see the language as well as hear it.

Now to do this good work Mr. H—— lived among the Indians. He is a missionary unlike any other. He has suffered much living as the Indians do to learn this language. Read what Mrs. Degen says: “Would you like to go out to dine where all the family kneel on an earth floor around the tin dish-pan in which the dinner has been cooked, and grab for ‘a little white meat,’ or ‘a little dark meat,’ or a ‘little of both, if you please’? Would you like to see your fellow diners throw the bones they have picked back into the pan? Or would you like to have your food brought to you in a wash-basin?”

Now you can see something of what Mr. Hadley bears. He is a hero. You can help him. So write to Mrs. Degen.

L.

HIS GIFT.

A LITTLE boy in Russia lay dying. But a few months before he had heard of Jesus and his love, and given his heart to that wonderful friend. His greatest desire in life was to have other Russian children get acquainted with Jesus. He meant when he grew up to be a missionary among his people; but God wanted him in heaven. Just before he died he called his father, and told him how much he wanted to have the Bible sent to people who were not acquainted with Jesus. Said he: “I haven’t much money, you know, father, but if you would take what is in my box and send it to the house where they print Bibles, I think there might be enough to dot the I’s in the name of Christ. I feel sure there must be enough to do that in one Bible, and I would like it so much! Will you, father?”

You do not need to be told that the father carried out his boy’s last directions, and the little purse of money is helping to-day to “dot the I’s” in that blessed name.

Surely that little fellow ought to have had engraved upon his headstone, “He hath done what he could.”

WORK ENOUGH.

SOME years ago—

“Some years ago!” Why, it was as long ago as five times the age of your grandpapa—he was eighty, I think—a brave man and a few sailors got into a small ship on the coast of Spain, spread its sails, and away westward they sped, over the ocean wide and rough with waves. They found America at last. Others came. Villages grew up. Still they came.

About this time, three thousand miles away, walked two—

“Lovers, I guess.”

Indeed they did love each other, if that is what you mean. See them in the picture of the “Two Missionaries;” were there ever sweeter faces, purer and more pitiful? It is because the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts. Dress and feathers don’t make beauty so much as a right heart, you must know.

These two hearts were walking near the dear old church, and as they walked they thought of the sermon the day before about bearing the tidings—the Gospel—to the needy. They had heard of America, and their hearts bled for the people here.

“And did they go to a seminary, and learn how to teach and preach, and get ordained, and get married, and come over here and have a Sunday-school and church?”

They left all to follow Jesus—fathers, mothers, everybody, everything, “for Jesus’ sake,” for wild America.

“And how did most of the people in America look when they got here?”

How does this creature on the following page look? or that one?

“Now you don’t mean that the Americans then were such objects?”

The very same. And our two sweet, beautiful missionaries came to them and learned their language and lived among them, and taught them of the true God, and Jesus Christ, the Saviour.

“Did they stay more than a year that way?”

They lived and died among them. Then their children took up the work, and they have been carrying it on ever since!

“And what came of it all?”

Why, many of those fierce savages put off their war paint and wild ways, and settled down in good homes like nice Christian people, with churches and Sunday-schools and ministers of their own. Some of them now look almost as sweet as the two sweet faces of the Two Missionaries. That’s the way it often works when God puts his grace into a rough heart. It really changes the face too into beauty. God can make everything beautiful.

“But what about the picture on the next page?”

You mean that queer-looking man going ahead with a child in his arms and a big boy by his side?

“It is a family on a journey somewhere.”

The “somewhere” is America. They are peasants (the poor working folks) of—Denmark, maybe.

They have heard of America—what a goodly land it is for the poor and homeless, and where they can be free to worship God—so they have sold the cow and poultry and a few other things, and putting into bundles what they have over, and saying a sad good-by to the dear old hut where they have always lived, they are on their march to the sea. They will soon be aboard the ship, Safety; then, after two months—

“Two months! why, the Teutonic of the White Star Line has just crossed the Atlantic in five days, sixteen hours and a few seconds.”

Yes, but this was long ago.

But the two months are gone; they have landed at Castle Garden, New York, and now those nine have become ninety thousand. You see, no sooner had they got nicely settled upon a little spot of land, and in a neat cottage, and two or three cows about them, and a patch of potatoes growing near by, when away went a letter back to Denmark to their cousins to pack up and come too.

Well, ever since the ships have grown larger and faster, bringing loads and loads of peasants, five hundred thousand some years, from almost every nation on the other side of the ocean.

“And those two sweet-faced missionaries, did they teach all these low people the good ways of God?”

Yes; they and their children. Don’t you see, they stand for all good missionaries whom Jesus sends? They are all beautiful in his eyes. Where in the Bible does it say something like “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace, etc?” If beautiful feet, beautiful everything—so beautiful that all among whom they go with these tidings become beautiful too!

See those children in the opening picture, coming down the road with bundles under their arms? Look them over, and say if you think they live in a palace, and if they wear silks or furs.

No, no, poor things! a sorry dinner they’ve had. A bed of straw for them to-night. But in a few years some cousins in America will send them some money; then they will be here, and somehow they must be made beautiful as those two sweet-faced ones. Oh! so much work in this land for Jesus, to meet these heathen at Castle Garden with the good news and make them beautiful. Oh! for more home missionaries. What say you?

L.

DOLLIES TO THE FRONT.

I CAME across an old paper which told a pretty story that ought not to grow old. It was about a “doll’s reception” which a certain Mission Band gave. The dollies were lent by the members and their friends, and the friends of their friends, until there was a great army of them. Then they were arrayed in choice robes and grouped with artistic skill. On the piano, under a lovely marriage bell of sweet-smelling flowers, were two bridal groups, dressed in satin and old lace regardless of expense. The friends of the bride and groom were numerous. Some of them were old, appearing in costumes of sixty years before; some were in Mother Hubbard dress, and one very large rag doll, with lips made of beet juice and eyes of black beads, came to the wedding in the little wooden cradle which had belonged to her mother’s grandmother.

There was an “old ladies’” group arranged on a round table, two of them dressed in Quaker attire, the others in the sweet old fashion of our great-grandmothers. Then there was a babies’ group, and a group of children fresh from the schoolroom; there was a German table, a French table, and I do not know what all.

One hundred and thirty dolls were lent for the occasion. The description of each group was printed in rhyme made by the friends of the Band, and from time to time, as a crowd gathered near any of the tables, one member stepped forward and recited the descriptive poem. Ten cents admission was charged, and the hall was thronged on two afternoons. There was not a cent of expense in the entire affair, and there was nothing to sell. Over forty dollars were taken in at the door, and the Mission Band went home happy in the thought that they and their dollies had enriched a certain school in Japan by that amount.

WHAT HAVE I DONE?

I LAY my finger on time’s wrist to score The forward-surging moments as they roll; Each pulse seems quicker than the one before; And lo! my days pile up against my soul As clouds pile up against the golden sun. Alas! what have I done? What have I done?

I never steep the rosy hours in sleep, Or hide my soul, as in a gloomy crypt; No idle hands into my bosom creep; And yet, as water-drops from house-eaves drip, So, viewless, melt my days, and from me run; Alas! what have I done? What have I done?

I have not missed the fragrance of the flowers, Or scorned the music of the flowing rills, Whose numerous liquid tongues sing to the hours; Yet rise my days behind me, like the hills Unstayed by light of mighty triumphs won; Alas! what have I done? What have I done?

Be still, my soul, restrain thy lips from woe! Cease thy lament! for life is but the flower, The fruit comes after death; how can’st thou know The roundness of its form, its depth of power? Death is life’s morning. When thy work’s begun, Then ask thyself—what yet is to be done? LILLIAN BLANCHE FEARING, _In Home Mission Monthly._

WHEN ST. CHRYSOSTOM PRAYED.

’TWAS not enough to kneel in prayer, And pur his very soul away In fervid wrestlings, night and day, For those who owned his shepherd care; But faith and works went hand in hand, As test of each petition made, And saints were helped throughout the land When St. Chrysostom prayed.

Within the closet where he knelt A box of Bethlehem’s olive wood— “For Christ” engraved upon it—stood; And ever as he daily felt The pressure of the church’s need, Therein the daily gift was laid; For word had instant proof of deed When St. Chrysostom prayed.

Beneath his folded hands he placed Whatever gold was his; and when He travailed for the souls of men, So long by pagan rites debased, The more he agonized, the more The burden on his spirit weighed; And piece by piece went all his store When St. Chrysostom prayed.

O, golden mother! let this thine alms Rouse us to shame who daily bow Within our sacred places now, With outstretched yet with empty palms! We supplicate indeed; but has Our faith brought answering works to aid? Have words by deeds been proven, as When St. Chrysostom prayed? MARGARET J. PRESTON, _in Missionary World._

PUT TO SHAME.

THEY were sitting in the window-seat, Magdalene and Mabel, busy with their work, and talking. “The Mission Band meets this week, you know,” said Mabel.

“I know it,” Magdalene said, with a scowl on her face; “I’ve got to go, I suppose, but I don’t want to a bit; I haven’t any money to spare to give; I’m not going to give but a cent, anyhow, I just can’t afford it. Isn’t this blue silk sash lovely, Mabel? It just fits my dollie’s eyes. It was horridly expensive; I had to give twenty cents just for this little piece.”

“Nell is going to Mission Band,” said that small woman from the carpet, where she played with her dollie. “Nell knows all about it; mamma told her. Nell doesn’t want to be a selfish little girl and not give to the heathens; Nell is going to give her bestest thing.”

Magdalene nudged her friend’s elbow to call attention to what her darling little sister was saying, and the two listened.

“What are you going to give, Pet?” asked Magdalene at last, as the baby voice ceased its talking.

The little girl looked up with surprised eyes; she had not supposed anybody was paying attention to her.

“What are you going to give to the Mission Band for the heathens?”

“I’m going to give my bestest thing,” said the baby, with sweet gravity; “I shall give my wubber dollie, that I love.”

Mabel laughed, but Magdalene looked sober. Nobody understood better than she how the “wubber dollie” was loved, and she knew that Baby Nell meant what she said.

“I think I will give my twenty-five cents, after all,” she said, after a moment’s silence, “and let my doll go without a fur cape; there is a lovely fur cape for sale at the doll store for twenty-five cents, and I meant to have it; but I believe I won’t.”

“You want to match Nell’s ‘wubber dollie,’” said Mabel, with a good-natured laugh; “but I don’t believe you can.”

* * * * *

SOME summer day you may be in Saratoga, N. Y. Among other sights you may see Indian encampments. Thither they come to sell their curious manufactures—bows, arrows, bead bags and many other queer things.

The squaws (women) will be among them, dressed as Indian women have always dressed, but hardly so well as “Teweelema.”

If you wish to see her you can now find her on her goodly farm near Lakeville, Mass., or traveling among the neighboring villages selling her wares—moccasins, necklaces of shells and beads, etc. She can chop a tree down or spade up the ground, and do almost any man’s work. She and her sister manage the farm. Her name is Wootonekanuske.

At Oneida, N. Y., you may always see a few Indian women on the cars or at the station, looking something like Teweelema.

But in a few more years there may not be any Indians left east of the Mississippi River. The Gospel is now among them, and maybe you will never again read of so fierce a warrior as Sitting-Bull or King Philip, Teweelema’s great, great, greatest grandfather.

L.

CARL HAMMOND’S LESSON.

FOR a boy who was usually happy, Carl Hammond certainly spent a very uncomfortable winter. It is true it was his first away from home, and some people thought he was young to be sent from home, but that was not the trouble. He was with Aunt Mary, which was almost the same as being with mother; and the schools where Aunt Mary lived were so much better than at Carl’s own home, that his mother had made the sacrifice, and sent him away.

His unhappiness had to do with a certain September day which was as bright and beautiful as a sunny day in early autumn can be. Carl remembered every little thing about that afternoon—just how his father’s desk looked, and what books were piled on the table at its left, and above all, just how Bunce looked when he bounded in at the window. He was writing to Aunt Mary then, he remembered, telling her on what train to expect him, and he had held the pen in hand and turned to laugh at Bunce because he was so ridiculously glad over having found him. He had leaned over and patted the dog’s eager head, and had asked him how he was going to manage to get along without his playmate all winter; and Bunce had begun to run around his chair in that absurd fashion he had when especially pleased, and had bumped against the table just as Carl had shouted to him to “take care!” The shout came too late. Bunce succeeded in jostling the table, so that a ponderous book set too near the edge tumbled off, taking the great cut-glass inkstand with it, and the contents of that dreadful inkstand spread itself not only over the costly book, but the handsome carpet as well. If it had happened but the day before, Carl could not have remembered every little particular more vividly.

Especially what followed; there is no denying that Carl was very much frightened. It seems a strange thing to say, but the truth is, he was not very well acquainted with his father. Mr. Hammond was connected with a business firm which sent him every year, and sometimes two or three times a year, to Europe; and between times he had to go South and West, and Carl hardly knew where else, on business; so that he was not often at home for many days together, and when there, was so crowded with business as to have little leisure for his family. Carl had once complained that whenever his father was at home for an hour or two it was always after he had gone to bed. Perhaps on this account he was the more frightened; for his father had great respect for books, and was particularly careful of the large one that Bunce had ruined. Carl could seem to hear his quick firm voice giving directions:

“Remember, my son, you are on no account to allow Bunce in the study; he is a dangerous fellow in such a place; he can hardly move without doing injury. Be careful always to close the sash window when you go there, lest he might follow you.” And Carl had been in the study on the day in question for a half hour, with the sash window wide open. Not that he had forgotten, but he believed Bunce to be a mile away taking a walk with his young mistress; and he said to himself: “It is very much pleasanter with the window open, and of course papa does not care when Bunce is away.” As if Bunce could not return at any moment! which he presently did. Even then Carl might have ordered him instantly out and closed the sash, but the dear fellow was so absurdly glad to see him, and ran around in such a funny fashion to show his joy that it seemed too bad to dismiss him at once. Therefore the result which I have given you.

But this was not the end of the story. Carl arose in great alarm, and without even attempting to repair damages, which indeed would have been beyond his skill, made all haste from the room, taking Bunce with him and closing the sash window carefully. Then, an hour afterwards, when his father’s stern voice questioned: “Carl, do you know anything about the accident in the study?” What did Carl do but ask: “What accident, sir?”

“The overturning and breaking of the large inkstand and the spoiling of a very valuable book. Did you have anything to do with it?”

“No, sir,” said Carl; “I had not.”

The poor fellow told his conscience that he really did not have a thing to do with it, that the dog did all the mischief while he sat perfectly still, and that his father was the one who had left the book open on the table so dangerously near the edge. But his conscience had been better taught than that, and would have nothing to do with such flimsiness. It told him plainly before he slept that night, that the name of such talk, in plain English, was lying!

Nobody questioned Carl further; his friends were in the habit of believing his word, and his father had been almost immediately called away by a telegram, so that indeed there had been no time to investigate. Two days afterwards, Carl himself left home. Now you know why his winter had been uncomfortable. The simple truth was, that he was an honorable, truth-loving boy, who had been astonished and dismayed at himself for telling what was not true, and who could not help despising himself for it. Moreover, he knew that if there was one sin more than another which his father hated with all his earnest nature, it was the sin of lying.

It may be surprising to think that a boy like Carl should be half the winter making up his mind to tell the exact truth; nevertheless such was the case. The longer he put it off, the more impossible it seemed to him to write to his father and explain his share in the mischief. But at last, one snowy winter day, only two weeks before the holidays, he did it. He felt better as soon as the letter was mailed. He told himself that no matter what his father said in reply, he knew he had at last done right, and should be glad over it. Still he watched for the home letter more anxiously than ever before. It was from his mother, with a little note enclosed, for Carl’s private reading, from his father.

“A fellow couldn’t have a better letter,” said Carl, wiping his eyes, and feeling a warm glow in his heart for the dear father who had been so kind and gentle, and yet honest and plain-spoken. Less than a week afterwards, Carl was on his way home. His mind was in a strange confusion as the train neared the home station. He could not help feeling just a little sorry that his father was at home. “Of course he will punish me,” thought the poor fellow. “I suppose he must; he always punishes disobedience. What if he should not let me see mother to-night! Or perhaps he will not let me go to Grandma’s with the family to-morrow. I’d most rather he would whip me, and perhaps he will!”

Over this thought the twelve-year-old boy’s heart almost stood still. His father had not often punished him in this way, but on the very rare occasions when it had to be done, it was managed in such a manner that Carl distinctly remembered it. By the time the train ran into the station he had succeeded in working himself up to such a pitch of excitement that he was almost tempted to run away, to avoid the disgrace of this home-coming. But his father was there, waiting.

“Here’s my boy!” Carl heard him say, and in a minute more the father’s arms were around him, and the father’s kiss was on his cheeks. Mother was waiting in the carriage, and not a word during the quick ride home, nor at the joyous supper table afterwards, was said to him about his fault. They went to Grandma’s the next day in great happiness, and the next day they went to Uncle Will’s. “I am having a holiday,” his father explained, “in honor of my boy’s home-coming. I am taking a longer vacation from business than I have had before in two years.” The days passed, and not a word was said to Carl about his disobedience and falseness. Nobody could be kinder or more thoughtful for his comfort and pleasure than his father, yet Carl could not help wondering when and how his punishment was to come. At last, one evening, when they were alone together for a few minutes, he resolved to discover. “Father,” he said, and his voice trembled a little, “when are you going to punish me?”

His father turned astonished eyes upon him. “Punish you, my dear boy! For what?”

Carl’s cheeks were very red. “Why, father, don’t you know—surely you remember? I wrote about it.”

“But surely, my boy, I wrote you about it! Did I not tell you I forgave you utterly?”

“O, yes, sir! but then I thought—that you would think”—Carl stopped in confusion.

“You thought I must remember the sin, and punish the sinner, even though I had forgiven him? Is that it?”

“Yes, sir,” said Carl, low-voiced and troubled.

“No,” said Mr. Hammond, and Carl noticed how tender his voice was; “I do not remember anything about it in the sense which you mean. Do you remember my telling you once that God meant fathers to be object lessons to their children, giving them some faint idea, at least, of what kind of a father God would be to those who trusted him?”

“Yes, sir,” said Carl.

“Very well, then, here on this card, which I would like you to keep in your Bible, is my answer to your question.”

The card was a lovely blue celluloid, and had printed on it in gold letters, the words, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

One evening, when Carl was twenty years old, he repeated that verse in a Christian Endeavor prayer meeting, and said that his father’s commentary on it had made him understand it. Then he told, in brief, the story which I have given you.

MYRA SPAFFORD.

HOWARD’S WAY.

(_Character Studies._)

THEY were all in the library after dinner, and were all talking at once, as the Edwards family were inclined to be. “I don’t see why we always have so much more to say than other people seem to,” Lora Edwards had once remarked, setting them all into shouts of laughter. Howard was not talking; his head was bent low over a Latin dictionary. They were waiting for some of the family, because they always gathered at this hour in the library for evening prayers; but Howard, while he waited, saved the minutes, remembering the hard lesson of the morning, and the liability to be interrupted in his study hour.

The back parlor door was pushed open and Uncle Edward’s handsome form appeared. “Where is Ashman Square?” he inquired.

Several voices at once attempted to answer him. “It is just off of Second Street,” said Lora. And Emma in the same breath said, “It is over by the river somewhere; near Park Street, isn’t it?” Then Dickie, “Why, Lora, it can’t be near Second Street, because Wyeth Avenue runs in there.”

“No, it doesn’t; Wyeth Avenue crosses at Third Street.”

Then exclamations from at least four: “Why, Lora Edwards! Wyeth Avenue isn’t near Third Street. I think Ashman Square is down by the Lincoln Statue; isn’t it, papa?”

“I am sure I don’t know,” said papa, who just then entered the room. “The city changes so rapidly and adds so many fancy names that I cannot keep track of it. Who wants to know—Edward? There is a map about somewhere. I shouldn’t wonder if Ashman Square was down near the old Ashman place, towards the river.”

“There!” said Emma, “I was sure it was near the river.”

“But the river is quite a stream, my dear niece,” Uncle Edward said, smiling.

“Yes; but Ashman Square is not very far down; it is near the Westfield car line.”

Then a perfect babel of voices ensued.

“O, Emma, no!”

“Emma Edwards! it is a quarter of a mile from the Eastman line, I am certain.”

“I don’t think Ashman Square is on this side at all; I think you are all confused.”

“Yes, it is; I pass it every day, but I don’t remember on which side of the avenue it is. I go down one way and come up another, and so get things mixed.”

“I don’t think any of you know much about it,” said Uncle Edward, and this time he laughed. Several voices began again in eager disclaimer, but Father Edwards silenced them: “See here, children, we must have prayers at once; I have an important engagement at seven. Afterwards, one of you can find a map and settle your discussion.”

Lora struck the chord and the entire family joined in:

“While Thee I seek, protecting Power, Be my vain wishes stilled.”

In the momentary lull which there was as they rose from their knees, Howard spoke, for the first time that evening.

“Uncle Edward.”

“Yes.”

“About Ashman Square—do you know where the Station D post-office is?”

“Perfectly.”

“Well, Ashman Square begins two blocks east of that.”

“So it does!” declared Lora; “why in the world didn’t some of us think of the post-office? that would have located it.”

“I never noticed how near it was to the post-office,” said Emma. “What I would like to know is, why Howard did not speak before, and save us all this talk.”

“Sure enough!” said Dickie. “Did you find the answer to that conundrum in your Latin dictionary? Why didn’t you look up, old fellow, and join the colloquy?”

“Couldn’t get a chance,” said Howard, with a good-natured smile; “you all had a great deal to say, and were bent on saying it, all at once; I thought I would keep still until the shower was over, and in the meantime a grain of fact might be evolved out of it; but there wasn’t.”

“Howard always waits until there is clear sailing,” said Lora. “I’ve noticed that he is the only one in our family who isn’t apparently burning to speak at the same moment when some one else is.”

“And when he does speak it is to the point,” said Uncle Edward. “Much obliged, my boy; you have saved me a bewildering tramp in the effort to follow the directions of these voluble young ladies.”

MYRA SPAFFORD.

ABOUT BOSTON.

BY THE PANSIES.

MAMMA told me why it was named Boston. There was once in old England a man so good and kind to sailors, and to people in distress on the water, that he was named St. Botolph, because the word “Botolph” is made from two words, which mean boat help. After a while the word “Boston” grew out of the name, and the place where this man had lived and died was called so. And Boston in New England was named for it.

LUCY STEVENSON.

* * * * *

I SAW a picture of the first house that was ever built in Boston. It is very homely. There are only a few windows, and one door, I think; and it looks like some of the log cabins of the West. A man named William Blackstone lived in this house all alone. It was built on a hill, and the place where it stood is now part of a handsome street in Boston. But the town was not called Boston when William Blackstone lived there; it was Shawmut.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

* * * * *

THEY used to have very strict laws in Boston about the Sabbath. From Saturday at midnight until six o’clock on Sunday evening no hired carriage could leave or enter the city, and during the hours of public service no wagon of any sort was allowed to move through the streets faster than a walk. Soon after the laws against using the bath-houses on Sunday were made, a person who thought himself witty had printed in the paper the following rhyme:

“In superstition’s day, ’tis said, Hens laid two eggs on Monday; Because a hen would lose her head Who laid an egg on Sunday. Now our wise rulers and the law Say none shall wash on Sunday, So Boston folks must dirty go, And wash them twice on Monday!” REUBEN S. BENTON.

* * * * *

I READ about a town meeting which was held in Boston in 1789, in which they voted that there should be “One writing school at the south part of the town, one at the center, and one at the north part; and that in these schools the children of both sexes shall be taught writing, and also arithmetic in its various branches, including vulgar and decimal fractions.”

Another law passed at the same meeting was, that there should be “A reading school in the north part of the town and one in the south part, and that the children of both sexes should be taught to spell, accent and read, both prose and verse.” Girls were allowed to attend these schools only half the year—from April to October—but boys could go in winter. This latter rule was changed in 1828, and the girls were allowed to attend through the year until they were sixteen; boys could attend only until they were fourteen. The Bible was the only reader then in use.

HELEN WESTOVER.

* * * * *

I WENT to Boston once to visit my grandfather, and he took me to lots of places, and showed me the picture of Ann Pollard; she lived to be a hundred and five years old, and she was the first to jump from the boat when the colonists came over from Charlestown; she was only ten years old then, and she gave a spring from the boat just as it was touching the shore, and landed. Grandfather showed her to me, and told me about her, because my name is Annie Pollard, and he said I had a little of the spunk of my old ancestor.

ANNIE POLLARD.

* * * * *

WE have been studying in school about John Hancock and his times, and our teacher told us about his wife’s breakfast party at the old Hancock House. It was in 1778, and a French fleet came into Boston harbor. Governor Hancock proposed that the officers be invited to breakfast; so his wife had her table set for thirty officers, and instead all the under officers of the fleet came also—a hundred and twenty more than were expected! Mrs. Hancock must have been in a panic for a few minutes, but she got out of her difficulties. First, she ordered all the cows on the Common milked, and the milk brought to her; then she sent among her friends and borrowed cakes and other things to help out, and gave them all a very nice breakfast.

The French count who commanded the fleet was very much pleased, and invited the governor and his wife to visit his fleet and bring their friends. This was Mrs. Hancock’s chance to be politely revenged upon him for bringing so many people to breakfast; she invited five hundred friends to go with her to the fleet! But they were politely received and entertained elegantly.

FANNIE BROOKS.

* * * * *

WE have a picture in our library of the old Hancock House. It isn’t much of a house as those things go nowadays, but when Governor Hancock lived there I suppose it looked fine. I like old John Hancock; it is great fun to read about him. Of course it was all nonsense for him to think that Washington ought to call on him first, that time when Washington went to Boston to visit in 1789, but for all that I think it was awfully cute, the way in which Hancock finally backed down. He had the gout, you know, so he did himself up in flannel and had his men carry him on their shoulders to call on Washington. If he had got to make the first call he meant to do it in state, and he did.

JOHN STUART WINTHROP.

* * * * *

WHEN I was just eight years old, my father spent a week in Boston with me, and showed me the Museum, the Navy Yard, the School for the Blind (I remember Laura Bridgman), the Idiot School, etc. He took me to the top of Bunker Hill Monument; I remember I counted the two hundred and ninety-seven steps. Not every father thinks that a child of eight could appreciate such things. Many and many a time since then, have I thanked my father for helping me to enjoy the remembrance of things which I never expect to see again. During that visit to Boston a boy ten years old took from my grandfather’s library a copy of one of the “Jonas” books which he coveted. The book was never missed, but twenty years afterwards the boy returned it with compound interest and apologies; his heart had never been at rest about it.

MRS. OLIVIA C. WARNE.

* * * * *

MY father was in Boston when the statue of John Winthrop was unveiled; he walked in that great procession, and heard the speech made in the Old South Church. I have been to Boston myself, and walked around that very statue. It is in Scollay Square. Governor Winthrop is dressed just as they used to dress in his time; he has a Bible in one hand, and a copy of the king’s charter in the other. There is a carved rope wound around a carved tree which stands for the ship that brought him over. I went to the beautiful State House, too. It is the one which was begun in Governor Hancock’s pasture! But it does not look much like a pasture where it stands now.

HARRY WESTFIELD.

* * * * *

ONCE I went to the old North Church in Boston. I went up the tower to the steeple, where General Gage stood and watched Charlestown burn. On the steeple is the date “1723.” The chime of bells on this church are just lovely! I heard them play. One of them has on it these words: “We are the first ring of bells cast for the British Empire in North America.” Another bell says: “Since generosity has opened our mouths, our tongues shall ring aloud its praise.” Inside the church are some queer wooden angels. The pews are very old-fashioned. The Bible in the desk was the one that George the Second gave to the church. After making this visit I learned “Paul Revere” and recited it at school; you know the signal lights which warned him shone from the steeple of the Old North.

MARY WINTHROP SMITH.

[For want of space, we must bring this very interesting bit of history about old Boston to a close. It is certainly not for want of material that we do so, and our hearty thanks are due the Pansies and their friends for the letters full of interesting items which have come to us. It is noticeable that the young people of to-day are interested in Boston’s past, which is a wise thing, for its history is full of suggestion for the future.

We earnestly hope that the city which we take up next, viz.: Washington, D. C., may call out as many items of interest from the young people.—EDITORS THE PANSY.]

MAJOR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

IF Bose and Fido and Sport and the rest will keep still long enough, I will tell you some things about myself which I should like you to remember.

I am growing old pretty fast, and if I had not the kindest master in the world I would stand a slim chance.

My smelling is good yet, and things taste nice enough, but my teeth are nearly gone. Bones which once would have been a luxury, now do me little good. The best I can do is to lap off a little of the meat and grease.

Yes, I can bark loud enough yet, but it vexes me terribly when I see the cattle in the field where they do not belong, or some wicked boys in the orchard stealing apples, to know that about all I can do is to bark.

I do not pretend that I have been a perfect dog, but I have had a great deal of experience in my day, and am not without the hope that you, my young friends, may profit by what I have seen and heard and felt myself, and known in the lives of others.

No, I shall not try to tell it all to-day; I have no wish to bore you with “long yarns,” as the sailors say. Besides, there would not be time before Fido might be wanted to go with his mistress across the pasture when she takes that beef tea to Willie Jones. She never seems afraid with her pet along. Bose, too, will be wanted to drive home the cows; so I will tell you only a little to-day, and more another time.

Where I was born I really do not know, but I am inclined to think it was a great way from here, perhaps in another country; we will never know, I suppose, though it seems to me it must be nice to know where one came into the world, and what kind of father and mother he had. But, dear me, I have seen some dogs, and folks too, who would have been happier if they had never known their parents!

I can just remember seeing my mother once. I think she must have been beautiful. The man who took me away from her often said in my hearing that I had her hair and eyes.

I can remember how mother cried when they carried me away. I had never seen her cry before, and though I was awfully frightened, yet I felt sorry for her.

I was petted enough, and had plenty to eat, but the journey was long, and shut up in that little box I was dreadfully lonesome.

But finally we reached home; then I had a warm bed, and a nice place; but some nights I was terribly scared there in the dark all alone. The boys had a pet donkey, and the first night I was there that fellow made his horrid bray. My! I thought I should die with fright. Well, when I had got a little used to the donkey, what should I hear in the tree over my head but a horrid “To hoo! to who?”

Yes, Sport, you may wag your tail and laugh; you know “who,” for you are a full-grown dog, and know all about the great staring owl, but with me it was a different matter.

As I remarked before, I think, my master was kind, and so was mistress, and they had no very small children to torment a little pup. Their little girl was so sweet and kind, it was always a pleasure to kiss her soft cheek; I do not believe she ever had any nice thing to eat that she did not wish to share with me.

Her brother was a noble fellow, too. Not always so thoughtful as his sister, and sometimes pretty rough; but so long as he did not mean to be ugly and hurt me, I could bear it.

The worst, I remember, was when their cousins and some of the neighbors’ children would come for the afternoon on a visit.

At first I was glad to see so many little children, but I soon found that all children had not such sweet dispositions as my master’s, or else their parents had not taught them so carefully.

We all ran and romped, and for a time it was jolly enough; but when my young master and mistress were out of sight, one of those rough boys would do something to torment me. He pulled my ears and my tail; once he boxed my ears so hard that I cried right out.

Then they put me on that donkey’s back, and while I was held there, the creature made one of those dreadful noises! Then I cried so loud my little mistress came and took me away.

Once I was so frightened by those rude children that I hid under the barn. I could hear them call my name and whistle for me, but I did not mean to come out till the children had gone.

It seemed a long time, but they finally went—I mean the visitors—and then I was only too ready to get out, for it was growing pretty dark where I was.

We were all very much frightened, but when master came home he took a big iron bar and pried a stone out, and made a hole big enough for me to crawl through as easy as need be.

I cannot make myself believe that those children remembered with pleasure what they had done to me that day. They never looked sweet and happy like little Lucy and her brother.

I long ago came to the conclusion that if one would be happy he must try to make others so; and I do not believe it makes much difference whether he walks upon two legs or four.

Another thing, I believe one’s usefulness depends very much upon whether he keeps his eyes open or not. Why, one does not need to be a full-grown dog to be able to make himself useful, and so thought a great deal of.

Take my case, for example: As I was saying, even when I was quite small the hired man used to take me when he went after the cows at night.

I suppose this was to give me the pleasure of a run in the pasture; they took old Sport along to do the work of driving. He, poor fellow, was getting pretty old, and could not run fast; but he was a good dog, and was well educated.

I did not at first understand how he could know so much—how he could tell the oxen from the cows, and the cows from the steers; and when there were other cattle mixed up with our master’s, on the road or anywhere, how he could know which ones to drive in, and which to leave or drive away.

One day as we were waiting for the hired man to fix a little place in the fence, Sport said something that astonished me greatly.

I think I had been saying how I wished I knew as much as he, and could do what he did. Then he gave me this hint. Said he, “I think our good master is planning to have you take my place in a few months. Soon I shall not be able to do the work, and if you watch out you will be able to do all that I have done. Even now,” said he, “you are beginning to save me a great many steps by starting up the cattle which are lagging behind, or that get out of the way.”

I shall never forget how pleased I was. I almost felt like another dog, and was so glad to think that I could do anything worth any one’s notice. I feel sure it was a great help to me to have him speak like that, and cannot but think that a great many others might be encouraged in the same way.

Proud little puppy that I was, I almost split my throat barking at the cattle that afternoon, and was much pleased to see that I could help.

Well, it was not many weeks after that, when one day the hired man went off fishing, and the master was all alone at home. It was late in the afternoon, and he was resting upon the front steps, looking very tired, for he was not well. I remember I had been wishing for the time to come when I could do something, and would be big enough to watch things. You see the fishing party had taken Sport with them to watch the wagon. I was thought too young to be taken off so far.

I had felt pretty sober all the morning, but the master had spoken very kindly to me several times, and while sitting there had called me to him and patted my head, and called me a nice little fellow. Finally he looked up from the paper he had been reading and said, “Well, Major, it is about time to go for the cows.”

“Now is your chance,” I said to myself, and off over the big stone wall I went. About the only thing I feared was that he would call me back, but he seemed too much surprised for that; so I ran away as fast as my four feet could carry me.

I did not know so well then where to look for the cows, but scampered around so fast that I soon caught sight of them and quickly had the whole lot on their way to the yard.

My only mistake was in doing my job too well, for I drove up the oxen and steers and yearlings as well as the cows.

When I had them all near the gate then I barked as hard as I could, and the master came and let down the bars, and drove in the cows and let the others go back.

Then I remembered how it was generally done, and felt much ashamed of my blunder. But master called me to him and petted me, and told me I had been a good fellow. Then late in the evening, when the others came home, he told them how I had surprised him by driving up the cows, and never said a word about my mistake in driving up the other cattle. I think that was so kind of him! I know a great many who would have been either so thoughtless or unkind as to have made fun of a youngster’s little blunder when trying to do his best. But he was not that kind of a man. You may be sure I never made that mistake again.

Then old Sport came over to my kennel, and congratulated me heartily on driving up the cows. All I could do was to thank him, and tell him it was because of the way he had encouraged me, helping me to think I might do something.

There have been many changes in farming since I can remember, but the cows have to be got and milked just as ever, only there seem to be more of them, and so I must not keep you any longer this time.

R.

* * * * *

BABY’S CORNER.

A HAPPY LITTLE GIRL.

BESSIE has good times. She lives in the country where the hills are white with snow.

Every morning after breakfast she puts on her long cloak and her warm hood and mittens, and goes to school with her brothers. The schoolhouse is half a mile away, but she loves to go.

Sometimes she runs and draws her sled. It is a new one, painted red, and is one of her Christmas presents.

Sometimes she sits on the sled, and her brothers give her a nice ride. They play they are ponies, and run very fast. Then Bessie shouts and laughs, and is happy.

Their home is in that little house beyond the hill. You can see the roof, and the smoke curling up from the chimney.

They are on their way home from school now.

Just as they got to the top of the hill Carlo came to meet them. He wagged his tail and licked Bessie’s hand, he was so glad to see her, for Carlo gets lonely without playmates all day.

The boys saw a rabbit run through the fence, and they went up to watch for it.

“Carlo shall have a ride,” said Bessie. So she took him in her arms and got upon the sled at the top of the hill.

She gave it a little push, and away they went, whiz! down the long hill so swiftly and smoothly. Oh! it was good fun.

Two more rides they took, then Charlie picked up the bag and said, “Come, Bess.”

When they get home mamma will have a nice warm supper ready for them.

After that they will go out and ride down hill until dark.

MRS. C. M. LIVINGSTON.

THE SAND MAN.

EACH night a man goes round our town, And into eyes of blue and brown, He sprinkles, with a careful hand, The finest, softest grains of sand.

Then as sweet blossoms close at night, O’er shining eyes fall curtains white; For all these precious grains of sand Are gathered up in Slumber Land.

’Tis there the peaceful river gleams Where children sail in happy dreams; The Sand Man takes them in his boat, So off my little pet must float. MYRA GOODWIN PLANTZ.

“IF I ONLY HADN’T!”

NOBODY could have started out with better intentions than did Teddy Brockway that bright spring morning. It is true it was only March, but Teddy lived so far South that the month of March meant spring; he was dressed in a neat spring suit, had his little sister Margaret by the hand, and Sally Amelia, her dollie, under his special care, and was started for a trip all by themselves to old Auntie Blaikslee’s, almost a half-mile away!

“Aren’t you afraid to let those two babies go off alone?” Grandmamma asked, looking up from her knitting with a somewhat troubled face.

Mrs. Brockway smiled as she answered: “O, no! what could harm them? Teddy knows every foot of the way as well as I do, and every neighbor along the road; and everybody knows him. Besides, he is seven years old, and I must begin to trust him.” However, she went to the door and called after them: “Remember, Teddy, I trust Margaret to you. It isn’t every little boy of your age who can be depended upon to take care of his sister. And, Teddy, remember you are not to ride with any strange person who may ask you.”

“Course not!” said Teddy, with dignity; “not unless he is Uncle Ben or Deacon West. I can ride with Deacon West—can’t we, muvver?”

“O, yes!” said Mrs. Brockway, smiling. “He is not much more likely to meet Deacon West on this road than he is to meet the man in the moon,” she said laughingly to grandma, “but he has to provide for all the possibilities.”

Two hours afterwards Teddy and Margaret, with Sally Amelia somewhat the worse for being handled by all the grandchildren of old Auntie Blaikslee, were trudging back in triumph. The errand entrusted to them had been carefully done, and Teddy had said over the message he was to give his mother until he knew it by heart, and had bravely resisted two invitations from good-natured teamsters to have a ride. He was almost within sight of the corner where they turned into their own grounds, and Margaret had been good and minded beautifully. Truth to tell, Teddy’s heart was swelling with importance; he had never before been sent on so long a trip with only Margaret for company. He felt at least ten years old. At the top of the hill he came to a halt. There, just in front of them, jogging comfortably along, was Jake Winchell, Judge Aker’s hired man. Everybody knew Jake and his old horse and cart, but nobody, or at least Teddy, had ever happened to meet him in that direction before; his road always lay the other way.

“Halloo!” he said, getting out to fix something about the harness, and spying the children as he did so, “here’s luck; an almost empty cart and two nice passengers to have a ride in it down the hill. Don’t you want to jump in?”

Teddy never wanted anything worse. For a small minute he hesitated. What was that “muvver” had said? “You are not to ride with any strange person who may ask you.” “Course not!” said Teddy again, indignant with himself; “just as though Jake was a strange person.” But even while his heart said the words, a voice away down deep contradicted it: “Teddy Brockway, don’t you know she meant anybody you are not used to riding with? And you never had a ride with Jake.”

“What of that?” said Teddy’s other thought, still impatiently; “that’s because he never comes the way we live; but I’ve talked with him, and muvver said she thought he was kind to boys, and patient with them, and everything. Just as if she would care for Margaret and me to ride down hill to the gate! We’re most there; and it is a bad hard hill for Margaret; and she has had a long walk.”

“Yes, sir, thank you,” he said aloud to Jake, smiling and bowing like a gentleman. “I should like to ride ever so much, for Margaret’s sake; she is tired.”

“All right,” said Jake, with a good-natured chuckle; “climb in and I’ll tuck her in after you, and take you a few miles on your road as well as not.”

Little Margaret, who paid small attention to cautions, and who expected that everybody in the world was bound to be kind to her and help take care of her, took this ride as a matter of course, and was soon seated beside Teddy, with Sally Amelia tucked safely under her arm. Jake decided to walk down the hill. “It’s a pretty steep pitch for this part of the world,” he explained, “and the harness ain’t none of the safest; I guess I better walk.”

Teddy looked at the harness and trembled. What would his mother say if she could hear that? Even now it was not too late to ask Jake to set them back again on the dusty road, but how he would laugh and call him a coward! Teddy couldn’t, and the down-hill ride began.

What made that poor old half-blind horse stumble on a hidden root that particular morning and pitch the crazy old cart forward with such a sudden lunge as to send Teddy rolling down the hill faster than the horse could have traveled? Above all, how did it happen that Margaret did not fall out, but lay flat in the bottom of the cart and screamed? Nobody knows how any of it happened. They only know that when the almost distracted Jake had succeeded in getting the horse on his feet, and lifting Margaret in his arms, and trying his best to hush her had stumbled with all speed to the spot where Teddy had stopped rolling, the poor little fellow had fainted, and had to be carried by Jake to the very door of his mother’s house, Margaret trudging solemnly along by his side, occasionally asking pitifully why Teddy went to “s’eep,” and why he didn’t wake up.

Poor Teddy “waked up” almost too soon for his comfort. It had been a terrible pain, when he tried to pick himself up from the road, which had made him faint.

Days afterwards, as he lay in his white bed with his leg done in “splints,” whatever they were, and watched the long, bright spring days full of Southern sunshine and sweet smells, and thought how long it would be before he could run about again, he would sigh out wearily, “O, muvver! if I only hadn’t!” Of course his mother tried to comfort him. Once she said: “But, Teddy dear, you did not mean to do wrong. You supposed of course that because Jake was considered an honest, clean-souled man, mother would be willing to have you ride with him. It was what we call an error in judgment. If I were you I would be glad that you escaped with only a broken leg, and that dear little Margaret was not hurt at all, and then try to forget about it.”

Teddy considered this for some minutes with a grave face, and in his eyes an earnest longing to take the comfort to his heart. But at last he spoke, in the slow, old-fashioned way he sometimes had: “No, muvver, it was an error in want-to! I knew ‘not to ride with any strange person’ meant with any person that you had not let me ride with before; and I knew I wasn’t doing real heart right; so if Margaret had been hurt it would have been my fault. O, muvver! if I only hadn’t!”

PANSY.

ABOUT WASHINGTON.

BY THE PANSIES.

I READ a letter written by Mrs. President Adams in 1796. In it she complains that there are not nearly lamps enough to light the White House decently, and that the making of the daily fires in all the rooms, “to keep off the ague,” occupies the entire time of one or two servants. She says there are no looking-glasses in the house but “dwarfs.” I think Mrs. President Harrison must have found a very different state of things. It is just like women to complain about there not being looking-glasses!

JOHN WEST.

* * * * *

MY great-grandfather used to be in Washington in Congress, when Daniel Webster was there. My father has told me all about it; they had great speeches. Grandfather heard Henry Clay when he made his wonderful speech. I’d like to have been with him! Father read to us last night about the speech, and in the book it said there were at that time two little boys, one eight years old and the other ten, whom nobody knew anything about until afterwards. One of them went to a primary school in Boston and studied a primer, and the other didn’t go to school at all, but had to work hard. The primer boy was named Sumner, and the other boy was Abraham Lincoln. I guess if the people in Washington had known what those two boys were going to do a little later, they would have been astonished.

LINCOLN STEVENSON.

* * * * *

MY father and mother lived in Washington in 1860. Father says it wasn’t much like a city then; there were no street cars, and they did not light the streets, only Pennsylvania Avenue, and they got their water from pumps or springs. There were no sewers, and the streets were not paved, and the parks were all full of weeds. He told me about it one day last spring when we were in Washington, and sat under the trees in beautiful Stanton Square. I could hardly believe that the lovely city ever looked as he described it. And to think that that was only a little over thirty years ago! Father says the changes seem like a dream to him.

LILIAN PRESCOTT.

* * * * *

IN 1808 there were only about five thousand people in Washington, and lots of fun was made of the city. A great many people wanted the Capitol moved farther North, and the papers were filled with jokes about the “City in the mud,” “City of streets without houses,” “Capitol of huts,” and all that sort of thing. I wish some of those simpletons who wrote that way could ride down Pennsylvania Avenue now! But they can’t, because they are all dead.

ARTHUR BURKHARDT.

* * * * *

MY mother used to be in Washington when the Northwest, where so many elegant houses are, was just a great swamp! When we were there a year ago she took me to walk on Connecticut Avenue, and showed me where she and Aunt Nannie used to play hide-and-seek. The elegant building belonging to the British Legation stands there now, and in every direction the houses and lawns are lovely! I asked mamma how they came to be allowed to play on such an elegant street, and she laughed, and said nobody in those days thought of such a thing as its ever being elegant around there. It seems queer to think what changes there must have been in a few years. My Auntie lives on Connecticut Avenue now, and I think it is one of the prettiest streets in Washington.

ALICE BARNES.

* * * * *

MY brother Robert liked the great dome best, but I was very fond of the bronze door at the main entrance of the Capitol. I had just been studying all about Columbus when I went to Washington, and it was so interesting to see his history carved on the door. Then I staid in the rotunda a long time. I like round rooms when they are very large. The paintings are beautiful. There was one of Columbus landing, and one which showed the Pilgrims just starting, and one of Pocahontas being baptized. I like to look at pictures of things that I know about. Of course I went up the round-and-round iron stairway which leads to the dome. I stood under the statue of Freedom and looked down at the city. It was beautiful.

CARRIE FOSTER.

* * * * *

WE went, last winter, to the Library of Congress. My uncle went almost every day, and I had to go with him, because I had nowhere else to go while he was there; but I had a nice book to read, and I liked it. The room is made of iron—I mean the shelves and rafters and all those things are—and the roof is of copper. It is said to be the only library in the world that is entirely fire proof. There are more than six hundred thousand books, and thousands and thousands of pamphlets in this library. Every book which has been copyrighted has to send two copies to the library. It is about ninety years since books were first gathered there. It was in 1800 that Congress voted to use five thousand dollars toward buying books for a library. I suppose they thought that would get books enough to last for a century, but hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent for them since. I saw the new library building going up. It is to cost nearly five millions. When it is finished they will have room for four million books! It is to have a gallery three hundred and fifty feet long, for pictures and beautiful things.

My uncle says this letter is too long; but I do not know what to leave out, so I will send it.

MARGARET WINTERS.

* * * * *

I WENT to Congress two or three times last winter. They behave better in the Senate than they do in the House. In fact, I don’t think the people in the House were gentlemanly. They smoked, and they quarreled, and three or four tried to talk at once!

ANNA BROOKS.

[This by no means exhausts the items of interest about Washington, but the article grows so long that we must omit the others, sorry as we are to do so. It is certainly a great pleasure to find our Pansies so wide awake, and so successful in selecting items which cannot fail to interest others. Remember the next city, and be in time for us to make careful selections.—EDITORS.]

MAJOR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

II.

ALTHOUGH I am a dog myself I do wonder how some of my race can afford to waste so much love upon masters who have so little love for them, or, it would seem, for any one else.

Now, for instance, there is Mr. Billings who lives on the hill; just think how he ill-treats and almost starves his dog, cuffing, scolding, licking him; and yet that poor fellow is just as glad to see him the next time as though he had been petted, and is ready to hunt, drive cows or sheep, or watch all night.

I have known that dog ever since he came into the neighborhood, and I knew old man Billings long before.

Being up that way I had a few words with friend Dash the day he arrived. I found him to be friendly—a dog that any man might love and be proud of. I was awfully sorry for him then, and have been ever since, for I did not think much of his master.

Sometimes, when I see the poor fellow coming, looking so lean and hungry, I run out into the road with the best bone I have on hand, for a bit of a lunch, and leave it where I know Dash will find it. My! it does me good to see him take it down.

I often think of him trotting for fifteen or twenty miles after that team, and as likely as not without a mouthful of breakfast before starting.

This is not mere surmise; he told me so one day—said he had been all day with nothing to eat but a scrap or two which he happened to find on the way; for he had not time to hunt for anything while in town, because he had to stay and watch the things in the wagon. It’s too bad, too bad!

Just think what Dash has done for that man!

You never heard about it?

Well, I will tell you. It was in the spring of last year—the time for washing sheep. When Mr. Billings went for his sheep, all his children who were big enough to help drive went along.

As he never pets anything that he has, so he never petted his sheep, therefore as soon as they heard him call they were much more afraid of him than they would have been of our master, I really believe, so away they went as fast as their legs could carry them.

If it had not been for Dash, Mr. Billings and all his boys could never have penned those creatures. But he seemed to know just what to do, and it was not long before they seemed to feel as though they had found a friend instead of an enemy in this dog; he worked like a good fellow, as he is.

After much skillful maneuvering, hard running and gentle barking, the sheep were all finally gotten into the pen, where Billings and his boys could take them one by one and wash them with the water which fell over the dam.

After the father and older boys were gone, little Bennie Billings, who is only a few months more than three years old, crawled through the garden fence and started after the others.

His mother did not miss him, thinking he had gone with his brothers. As it was, Bennie came trotting along while the rest were absorbed in the work of washing sheep, and so was not noticed by any one of them.

But faithful Dash had his eye upon him all the while, and felt that it was more important that he should look after the boy than the lambs.

He tried hard to keep between Bennie and the water, but this he was not long able to do.

Sliding down the bank the boy crawled out upon a slippery rock, and from that fell into the water.

It was deep, and Dash had all he could do to drag the little fellow to the land. He could not pull him out; but holding on as well as he could, he growled very loud.

Dash was getting pretty tired, and the case was growing desperate, when a neighbor hearing the growl, came to the rescue.

Poor Bennie was almost gone; he would not have lived much longer; but if help had not come, Dash would have died with the little chap he was trying to save.

Think of that father kicking Dash after that, or ever forgetting to give him all he needed to eat! You would think the boy’s mother would look after her child’s rescuer; but it is said she has little to do with.

It would not seem so strange if the faithful fellow were not all the time doing things worthy of being remembered.

It was only last fall, when the corn was well grown, that this hard master came home one rainy night and forgot to fasten the gate after him. There were a great many cattle upon the road, and Dash told me he could hear the bell upon one old cow dingling away as plain as day all the time the master was unharnessing the horses. He said he ran out by the gate and barked as loud as he could when Mr. Billings was going into the house; but it did no good. So there was nothing for him to do but go and stay there all night in the hard rain.

Telling me about it he said: “I wouldn’t have minded it, though it was so cold and wet, if master had noticed it; if he had just said, ‘Good faithful fellow, you saved our garden and cornfield!’ but he never noticed me except to scold me for getting in the way when I came into the kitchen to warm myself a little, though he knew there were more than twenty head of cattle which would have been in that garden and cornfield if I had not kept them out.”

But for all that he would do the same things over again, or anything else that he can do for the comfort and help of his hard master.

I suspect Dash misses these little kindnesses more for the reason that he has not always been used to such treatment.

You see he once had a good master; but the man was taken ill and had to go away, and for some reason could not take Dash with him.

One day when we met down town near the post-office he told me this story.

By some mishap the house of his former master took fire. How it happened he did not seem to know. The mistress had gone into a neighbor’s house for a few moments, and had left her baby asleep in the cradle, in charge of a little girl, while Dash watched at the front gate to see that no tramp came in.

Said he, “I smelt something, and looked around just in time to see that little girl as she ran out of the front door crying ‘Fire!’

“In a moment I thought of Baby, and saw that the girl had left it in the house; so I dashed through the door and into the thick smoke, and finding the cradle I caught the child by his frock, and pulling with all my might I got him out on the floor and dragged him to the door. Just as I got him to the first step, where we could breathe again, the mother arrived.

“But she came too late to have saved her baby if it had been in the cradle then, for that was already in full blaze. As it was, the poor thing was almost smothered with the smoke.

“How that mother hugged and kissed me! She made so much ado about it that I felt almost ashamed. Yet I must confess it was gratifying to know that the mother appreciated what I had done.

“Well, after that there was nothing in the house too good for me to eat, no place where I was not welcome, no kennel too nice for me to sleep in, nor was there any lack of petting.”

Just imagine what a change from a home such as that, to the miserable one he now has to endure.

I do feel so sorry for him!

Sometimes I feel as though I should not be as faithful as Dash is if I were in his place; yet I must not forget that duty is duty, and that one must not do wrong because he has not been treated as he should be.

If this poor fellow’s case were a solitary one, it would not seem so bad; but I am sorry to say that all over our land there are as faithful fellows as Dash treated no better than he.

Think of those dogs with drunken masters! Think how much they have to endure of hunger and cold and abuse, though they are as faithful as life. I can hardly keep from growling when I think of it!

But I must not talk in this way any longer to-day. I have spent the hour speaking of another, so we must wait till some other time before I can tell you anything more of my own experience.

Indeed I was not intending to talk all the time about myself; I would like to set before you a little of the lives of the best of our race, such as will afford you excellent examples for imitation, that your lives may be good and true.

R.

VESUVIUS.

NEARLY two thousand years ago there was a mountain, and its name was Vesuvius. From the foot of it to the very top it was almost like a garden.

At the bottom were two great cities, called Herculaneum and Pompeii. The mountain is there now, and near it is the city of Naples in Italy.

One day, when everything was going on in those great cities just as usual, an awful sound was heard like the firing of ten thousand of the biggest cannon; the earth shook as if it was going to pieces, then it grew dark like night. The sky was filled with flying cinders, or something like ashes; the air had a sulphurous smell. All the people wondered. Some ran into the street, some took to the boats and rowed away as fast as possible, some screamed. Children clung to their mothers, hiding their faces in their dresses. Animals broke away and ran furiously, dashing themselves against the rocks or plunging into the sea; the very birds sighed as they swept through the sky.

The mountain—this Vesuvius—was on fire; the fire was spouting from its top in terrific forms. Smoke, such as you have never seen it, leaped as the darkest thunder clouds upward, while melted earth and rock ran down the sides of Vesuvius like a devouring flood. Before it, the gardens fled away. On it came, rushing, foaming, burning. It leaped upon the houses and buried them, whole streets at once. So suddenly it came that few of the people escaped. What a time was that!

Think of a whole city, like Philadelphia, buried ten or twenty feet deep, so that in the place of the grand palaces, stores and temples, nothing was seen but a smoking furnace—red-hot lava!

Not a great while since people began to dig. They dug and dug, and after years of digging there were the streets again and buildings, the merchant selling his goods, babies sleeping in their mamma’s arms, a bride and groom standing up to be married, a funeral procession coming from a house, a miser counting his money, a cruel father beating his child, a loving mother kissing her son, a marriage feast in this house, a dying parent in that. Just as the fierce, quick flood of lava found them, so it buried them, and so they were found after nearly two thousand years!

Since that awful day the volcano, Vesuvius, has been on fire again and again.

L.

AURORA LEIGH.

(_English Literature Papers._)

HOW many of my Pansies are acquainted with her? She is “a woman in a book,” and the book was written by a woman of whom you have surely heard—Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I want you to know something about this story book and its author. There are those who think the story is too “grown-up” to interest children; but that is because they do not understand certain kinds of children very well. When I was a little girl of ten, I was very fond of narrative poems, and read some which were judged far above my understanding.

Would you like a picture of Aurora’s room, as she describes it? Listen:

“I had a little chamber in the house As green as any privet hedge a bird Might choose to build in. . . . The walls were green, the carpet was pure green, The straight small bed was curtained greenly, And the folds hung green about the window, Which let in the out-door world with all its greenery. You could not push your head out and escape A dash of dawn-dew from the honeysuckle.”

Poor Aurora lost her mother when she was four years old, and her dear, dear father when she was just a little girl. Then she sailed across the ocean from her home in Italy to her father’s old home in England. When she first saw English soil, this is the way she felt:

. . . “oh, the frosty cliffs looked cold upon me! Could I find a home among those mean red houses, Through the fog?. . . Was this my father’s England? . . . . . . I think I see my father’s sister stand Upon the hall-step of her country house To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm, Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight As if for taming accidental thoughts From possible quick pulses. Brown hair Pricked with gray by frigid use of life. A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines; A close mild mouth . . . eyes of no color; Once they might have smiled, but never, never Have forgot themselves in smiling.”

You cannot imagine, I think, any life more unlike what Aurora had been used to in her home in Florence, than the one to which she came in England. She describes her aunt’s life as—

“A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage, Accounting that to leap from perch to perch Was act and joy enough for any bird. Dear Heaven, how silly are the things That live in thickets, and eat berries! I, alas, a wild bird scarcely fledged, Was brought to her cage, and she was there to meet me. Very kind! ‘Bring the clean water; give out the fresh seed!’”

You wonder what sort of a little girl she was? She tells us:

“I was a good child on the whole, A meek and manageable child. Why not? I did not live to have the faults of life. There seemed more true life in my father’s grave Than in all England. . . . . . At first I felt no life which was not patience; Did the thing she bade me, without heed To a thing beyond it; sat in just the chair she placed With back against the window, to exclude The sight of the great lime-tree on the lawn, Which seemed to have come on purpose from the woods To bring the house a message.”

So quiet was she, and pale, and sad, that her aunt’s friends visiting there, whispered about her that “the child from Florence looked ill, and would not live long.” This made her glad, for she was homesick for her father’s grave. But her cousin, Romney Leigh, a boy somewhat older than herself, took her to task for this. He said to her:

“You’re wicked now. You wish to die, And leave the world a-dusk for others, With your naughty light blown out.”

Well, she did not die, but lived to be a sweet, proud, brave, foolish, sorrowful, glad, happy woman! You think my words contradict one another? No; they may belong to one life, and often do.

I do not mean that you will be interested in all her story—hers and “Cousin Romney’s”—not yet awhile. Some day you will read it, study it, I hope, for the beauty of the language, and for the moral power there is in it. Just now, my main object is to introduce you, so that when you hear the name “Aurora Leigh,” you may be able to say: “I know her; she is one of Mrs. Browning’s characters—a little girl from Florence, who lived with an aunt in England.” Or when you hear Mrs. Browning’s name, you will say, or think: “She wrote a long poem once, named Aurora Leigh.”

Why should you care to know that? Because, my dear, it is a little crumb of knowledge about English Literature, a study which I am hoping you are going to greatly enjoy by and by.

Oh! Mrs. Browning wrote many other poems, though the one about which we have been talking is perhaps considered her greatest. There are some which I think you must know and love. For instance:

“Little Ellie sits alone ’Mid the beeches of a meadow, By a stream-side on the grass; And the trees are showering down Doubles of their leaves in shadow, On her shining hair and face.

“She has thrown her bonnet by, And her feet she has been dipping In the shallow water’s flow; Now she holds them nakedly In her hands, all sleek and dripping, While she rocketh to and fro.

“Little Ellie sits alone, And the smile she softly uses Fills the silence like a speech; While she thinks what shall be done— And the sweetest pleasure chooses For her future within reach.”

There are seventeen verses; of course I have not room for them, but you will like to find the poem and read for yourselves. It is entitled “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest.”

Then there is that wonderful poem of hers called “The Cry of the Children.” Surely you ought to know of that. It was suggested to her by reading the report which told about children being employed in the mines and manufactories of England. It is said that Mrs. Browning’s poem was the means of pushing an act of Parliament which forbade the employment of young children in this way. The poem has thirteen long verses, every one of which you should carefully read. Let me give you just a taste:

“Do you hear the children weeping, O, my brothers! Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears! The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west; But the young, young children, O, my brothers! They are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free. . . . . . .

“‘True,’ say the children, ‘it may happen That we die before our time; Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen Like a snowball in the rime. We looked into the pit prepared to take her; There’s no room for any work in the coarse clay; From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying ‘Get up, little Alice! it is day.’ If you listen by that grave in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries. Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, For the smile has time for growing in her eyes. And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled In the shroud by the kirk-chime. ‘It is good, when it happens,’ say the children, ‘That we die before our time.’”

It will never do to take more room with this paper, and I have told you almost nothing about the dear lady who voiced the children’s cry so wonderfully, and to such purpose! Suppose you let me take her story, little bits of it, for the next PANSY. Besides, I want to introduce you to her dear “Flush.”

PANSY.

BABY’S CORNER.

A GOOD TIME.

THIS is Trudy. She is all ready to go with papa.

They are going up in the woods to the “sugar bush.”

It is April—a bright, sunshiny day, but the wind is cold, so she has to wear her warm coat and hood.

As Trudy ran along through the woods she saw a little bluebird singing on a branch, and she found yellow violets and tiny blue flowers with a long name. They had just poked up their heads through the snow. Brave little blossoms they were!

Wooden pails hung on all the maple-trees. The sap was running into them. When the pails were full of sap John, the hired man, brought it into the little sugar house and boiled it, and made nice cakes of maple sugar.

The house had a great fireplace. A bright fire was crackling there.

Trudy sat down on a stool and warmed her toes.

There was a big black kettle over the fire; it was almost full of sap. It bubbled and boiled and made a good smell.

John stirred it with a long wooden spoon. He stirred and stirred a long time, and the fire snapped and the sap boiled, and Trudy watched, and by and by it was done!

Then papa got a pan of snow, and John dropped little bits from the spoon all over the snow.

When it was cool Trudy put in her thumb and finger, and plump! went one of the little brown balls into her mouth. Oh! but it was good. Trudy thought maple candy was ever so much better than the pink and white stuff she bought at the stores.

She ate and ate, till papa said, “No more, dearie.” So she carried the rest of it to little brother.

They rode home on the wood sled, drawn by two big oxen. Trudy said it was just the “beautifulest time” she ever had in her life.

She whispered to papa that she thought God was very good to make so many big trees full of candy just to please little girls and boys.

MRS. C. M. LIVINGSTON.

THERE you have a fine Holland house, a palace rather. Come, let us go in. Just think, you have a royal invitation. Well, here we are. In this elegant room is a kingly throne. In that beautiful chair sits the little Queen of Holland.

Doesn’t this Miss look like a wise sovereign, able to command armies and navies and make laws?

Now you laugh. But come out into her big back yard, and you shall see our little maid rule her subjects. See how obedient they are, running to her or fleeing from her as fast as their legs can carry them—and their wings too—

“Wings!”

Why, bless you, yes. This little Queen has one hundred and fifty cooing doves. She is their beloved mistress, feeding and fondling them, calling them by name, they laughing, singing, talking for her, after the dear dove fashion.

But look! there comes the Shetland pony, and quick as a cat she is on his back, and away they go down the road, gallopty, gallop, she tossing back a kiss to her mamma, the Queen Regent, who looks from the palace window. There she comes back, her face full of roses and laughter.

Twenty minutes more, and she is a student like any of you, with spelling-book, pen or geography, or thumbing the piano or reading aloud to her mother. She is her mother’s constant companion. She is up at 7 A. M., and kneeling at her mother’s knee, says her morning prayers.

She is often dressed completely in white, even to gloves and stockings. Watch and see what she will be in coming years.

L.

A WONDERFUL STONE.

A MR. MENINGER of New Orleans, while visiting in the town of Chilpanzingo, Mex., saw a rock there which he—and others—says foretells rain twenty-four hours in advance!

In fair weather it is grayish, very smooth and cold, but when it is going to rain it becomes a dingy red at the base, pink at the top, and it becomes warmer and warmer till the rain falls. If there is much lightning, the stone becomes charged (filled) like an electrical jar, so that you cannot safely approach it.

After the rain it goes back to its first state of color and coldness.

L.

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS.

WHY so soon with flocks returning? O, dear father, tell us why: Scarce the night lamps ceased their burning, Scarce the stars dimmed in the sky When we heard the distant bleating Of the flock come o’er the lea; While the stars were still retreating Thou wert coming o’er the lea; Home so early in the morning! Sheep and lambs so fast you’re leading To the fold at early dawning, At the time of sweetest feeding!

Ill, dear father, art thou? Surely Suffering art thou? Tell us true! Has some lambie been unruly— Wandered far away from view? Must thou go across the mountain, Starting in the morning gray, Search by vale, and rock, and fountain For the lost one, gone astray? But thy face is bright and beaming, And thy step is free and glad, And thy eyes with joy are gleaming Surely nothing makes thee sad!

Thus she chattered to her father, Shepherd of Judean plain; Eager for some reason given Which might satisfy her brain; But the father, heart o’erflowing With the story he could tell, Felt the spirit in him burning— Felt his soul within him swell— And, with tender touch, down bending Gently drew her to his breast; His life-calling sweetly lending Skill for what he loved the best.

Then his home flock, like the other, In the home fold where they dwelt— Father, children, precious mother— All before Jehovah knelt; Knelt to thank the covenant-keeping God of Jacob, who alone In their waking and their sleeping, Safely shelters all his own. This—and then began the story Of the night before that morn, When the angels came from glory, Telling that the Christ was born.

(_The story._)

On the hillside near our flocks were sleeping, While we, reclining by, our watch were keeping; The sun had set in a glow of splendor, And the stars looked down so pure and tender That we felt a hush pervading Every breast; for the fading Of the day had been so slow, And the twilight’s gentle glow Had left the earth so still That over plain and hill A gentle sleep seemed holding all As quiet as beneath a pall

Of death. When every heart Was hushed, and sure to start At slightest move or sound, From sky or earth or ground, We would not break with song The silence, which so strong Had reigned supreme the while, But sought we to beguile With word of prophecy the hour, Talking of Him whose conquering power Our fallen Israel should restore, And make her glory as of yore.

The Lord seemed wondrous near us then; As when our father Jacob dreamed, or when The great law-giver stood on hallowed ground And heard Jehovah speak in words profound; When, suddenly, burst on the ravished ear A voice like music, or like trumpet clear, And words most wonderful did there proclaim: Tidings, glad tidings of the glorious Name! He bade us haste to Bethlehem away To find the Babe there born to us this day; And then, when Paradise I see complete, May it such strains to these glad ears repeat! Then as from cloud the pealing thunder breaks Till ’neath its voice the very mountain shakes, So burst in chorus the celestial choir, Each tongue aflame with heaven’s own altar fire, To celebrate, as by Jehovah sent, The long foretold and now fulfilled event— Our own Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem town! The Christ of God from heaven to earth come down! The singing ceased, and all was still again Save the sweet echo of “Good-will to men”; The choir had flown; our flocks were all at rest, And could we, after such a vision blest,

Await the dawning to behold the Stranger Which cradled lay in Bethlehem’s lowly manger? If we forgot our flocks, in haste to see the sight Revealed to us by angel hosts last night, Was it so strange, when honored thus were we To be the first of all our race to see, Worship and welcome to this world the King Of whom the Prophets old did write and sing? And so we hastened, sped, and tarried not Until we found, O, joy! the very spot Where lay this lily from sweet Paradise, Angelic beauty there, before our eyes!

We bent, we worshiped, kissed the Babe so fair, Then hastened back through all the perfumed air To find our flocks by angel guards attended, Better by them than by our skill defended. Then each with gladness homeward sped away To tell the tidings of this wondrous day. The questions asked as round the father’s knee The children pressed in eager ecstasy, I will not try to tell. I cease My story of the “Prince of Peace,” This only adding—though the talk was long— There followed it this burst of sacred song:

(_The song._)

O, thou Infant holy! In thy cradle lowly, Feeble stranger seeming, Though almighty. Deeming It thy pleasure, Even in this measure, In this casket fair Human woe to share.

We thy praises sing; To thy cradle bring Love, and thanks and treasure, Offerings without measure; Just now come from glory, We have heard thy story Sung by angel chorus, While God’s light shone o’er us.

O, thou Baby stranger! Hiding in a manger, By crowded inn rejected, By pilgrims all neglected, For thee our hearts are burning With a holy yearning. Be thou our guest; Our arms would now enfold thee, Our hearts would gladly hold thee; We love thee best. G. R. ALDEN.

THE SPOOL-COTTON GIRL.