66 people and teams might go under it." In a Virginia school, of which I was the teacher many years ago, a boy wrote a composition" on the ocean, in the course of which he declared that "the ocean is a great blessing to mankind; for, without it, Columbus would never have discovered America." It was a Boston boy, of an arithmetical turn of mind, who, when asked if he had ever had the measles, replied, "Yes;" and to the question, "How many?" answered "Six." He must have been a son of the man who, being asked what were his politics, said that he had none. "None at all?" 66 'No, not a politic." 66 66 Some years ago a class of boys was under examination in the sea-beaten town of Sussex, England. The subject of which their knowledge was to be tested was the Flood. Among the questions was, How did Noah know that there would be a flood?" "'Cause," shouted a confident urchin," he looked at his almanac." This boy was probably first cousin to another, who, when asked by a missionary, "If your father and mother should forsake you, who would take you up?" answered promptly, "The police." More naïve than even these replies was that of the English youngster to the question, "Who is the prime minister of Great Britain?" "Mr. Spurgeon." "We all send love, and so do I," wrote an eleven-yearold to me recently from his home in "little Rhody." Visiting a Benedict friend in Maine, I overheard one day a newly-breeched urchin complaining bitterly of his mother because she had refused to grant his request for some bread and molasses. "I'll tell you how to work her," said a younger brother in low tones, as if fearful of being overheard. 66 Bump your head against the wall, and cry, Dan, as I do, and you can get anything you want." It was in Cincinnati that little Johnny ran into the house one day, while the mercury was in the nineties, and, with the perspiration streaming from every pore, shouted: "Mamma, mamma! fix me! I'm leaking all over!" Of course it was in Massachusetts that a boy, after attending a Sundayschool, plucked several hairs from his cranium, and began examining them with a magnifying-glass. “Why,” he despairingly cried, after many fruitless experiments, "I can't find any figures on my hair!" "Why did you expect to find any?" asked his mother. With charming innocence and perfect good faith, he replied: "Does n't the Bible say, 'The hairs of your head are all numbered'?" 66 The following incident fell under my observation many years ago in Waterville, Maine. Everybody knows how customary it is for boys to crow like chanticleer over each other at every opportunity; and among other things, if they are rivals at school or elsewhere, to outbrag each other regarding the comparative extent of their respective fathers' possessions, as, for example: "My pa has got a great big house, and yours h-a-i-n-t!" "My pa's got a new wood-shed," and so on, from houses and lands to hen-coops and martin-boxes. Two young rogues had been engaged one day in a boasting contest of this sort, when one of them, having exhausted in his enumeration all his father's possessions, real property, personal, and mixed, was "stumped" at last, brought to a dead stand. Meanwhile his antagonist was chuckling, in the anticipation of triumph, with all the ecstasy of a ten-pin player who has won a succession of ten-strikes. He had brought up his corps de réserve, his imperial guard, in the shape of a corn-barn and an old spavined horse, and was charging home upon his unfortunate rival with all the fury of a Cos sack transfixing a Pole. Conscious of impending defeat, our hero stood silent under the biting taunts, his countenance the picture of blank despair. Vainly did he try to recall one, just one, additional piece of property, however small, that his papa owned; but it was like "calling spirits from the vasty deep," it would not come. Suddenly a bright thought struck him. "Well," he exclaimed, as his features lighted up, and his eyes sparkled with triumph, "I don't care, Jim; there's one thing you hain't got, you hain't got any dead grandmother!" It was not a boy, but a little girl, who wrote an essay on the cow, and closed by saying that "the cow is the most useful animal in the world, except religion;" a remark which recalls a sentence in a letter of introduction, given in 1861 to a friend of mine, by Artemus Ward: "He is a member of the press, and several other religious denominations." A down-east schoolboy once gave an interpretation of a passage of Scripture, at which Clark and Henry would. have stood aghast. Being asked by the pedagogue the meaning of the phrase "making the waste places glad," which a school-mate, who was noted among his playmates for his frolics with the girls, had just read aloud, he paused, and scratched his head with a puzzled look; then suddenly, with a look of triumph, he cried out: "It means hugging the girls; for Tom Jones is always hugging 'em round the waist, and it makes 'em as glad as can be.” Reader, did you ever visit a New England town-school, in the days of "auld lang syne"? If so, you must have heard some such cries as these: "Master! Jim keeps pokin' straws in my ear!" "'Gus Stevins keeps scrougin' so, I can't study my lesson!" "May I leave my seat?" "Sam Soule has spilt his ink all over my writing-book!" "Master, may I gwaout to get s'mice [some ice] to put in my trousers to keep my nose from bleedin'?” "Master, Tom Ross is whispering to the girls; I seed him as plain as could be." "Don't joggle me agin, gaul darn ye!" "Gimme my ruler!" "Quit pinchin'; you'll git it, Bill Healey, when school's dismissed!" "Who cares for you, Hen Barney?" etc. But amusing as this scene may be, it is more diverting to see a troop of boys let loose from an old-fashioned country school. No sooner does the weary, care-worn pedagogue, pulling out his watch, utter the joyous words, "School's dismissed!" than exeunt boys, like a stampede of wild-cats, through the narrow porch, wedging it so full that for some moments they can hardly move, and, finally, as the jam gives way, sprawling en masse at full length over the threshold. But, huzza! they have scrambled up again; and here they come, with their "smiling, shining faces," running, leaping, jumping, tumbling along, hallooing at the top of their lungs, their little hearts almost bursting with joy over their release from their literary dungeon and the terrors of the master's rod. "Whoop!" there they go "like mad," with limbs all life and elasticity, and hearts all harmony and gladness, drunk with their dream of liberty, and dashing off, like Congreve rockets, into a thousand paths of pleasure and fun, some to roam through the woods and fields; some to sail their pine-shingle boats on the lake or silver brook; some to gather nuts from the beech or the oil-nut tree, or to angle for perch or the sly trout; but each fancying that he will have time to go half round the world and be back before night. Happy, happy schoolboys! The very curs of the neighborhood sympa thize with your joy over your release from thraldom, and could they speak, would each say with Burns's Cæsar, "My heart has been so fain to see them, That I for joy hae barkit wi' 'em." The Hardening THE poet Whittier is reported as saying Process. that "Snow-Bound" recalls to him his sufferings from the cold in the home of his boyhood, where the snow beat in through the crevices in the roof of his bedroom; and he attributes his lack of robust health to these early exposures. And yet there are hundreds of persons who never tire of singing the praises of "the hardening process" of bodily training, or exposure to cold, wet, etc., and of lauding the supposed consequent toughness of our forefathers, who really were shorter-lived than their descendants. "Do not hardships harden the constitution?" it is triumphantly asked. The simple truth is, that early hardships, by destroying all the weak, merely prove the hardiness of the survivors. That hardiness is the cause, not the effect, of their having lived through such a training. By loading a gun to the muzzle, and firing it off, you do not give it strength; you only prove, if it escape bursting, that it was strong. Mental Activity DRYDEN, in his masterly portraiture of and Longevity. Shaftesbury, the restless and scheming counsellor of Cromwell and chancellor of Charles II., characterizes him as "A fiery soul, which, working out its way, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay." Immortal lines, which have become household words, but which, as descriptive of that wonderful politician, are |