adjoining chair and help them to what they needed, in the way of thread from the skein around her neck, or whispered advice to John, or the use of the scissors on Lucy's card.

When the work was done it was carried triumphantly home to be hidden away till Easter morning, for mother. Meantime if any big sister or aunt could help to put on a bit of ribbon at the top and paste sandpaper on the back for a match-scratcher, so much the better. If not so utilized it made a pretty ornament to fasten on the wall with pins after the manner of artists with small sketches in the studio.

When the happy morning came, mamma found by her breakfast plate that bit of handiwork done by loving fingers for her and no mother could fail to love the wee giver all the more for such proof of patient industry. Even the print of David's thumb tarnishing the lily's purity, would be generously overlooked that Easter morning.

When Arbor Day came and we planted an oak with much enthusiasm, to beautify the grounds, an oak leaf done in green on pale tan cardboard was presented to papa for a bookmark. It could be backed with ribbon fringed at the ends or merely pasted with white paper to hide the stitches on the back and to furnish a smoother surface.

Some were

able to sew an extra one while the others were finishing the first, so a few extras were made.

For May Day a basket of brown on a pink ground was ready to give to some child friend for a souvenir, and for Memorial Day a patriotic flag with red and blue wools and brown for the staff, on white board, did honor to the heroes who sleep.

Several things were gained in this work. Punctuality was increased because pupils wished to come in time for a few minutes' work. The room was comparatively quiet because all were intent on their work. The habit of industry was strengthened for the spare moments were utilized. The ethical spirit was fostered in the giving, the artistic in the form and color to some extent, and the practical because each could be put to some use. We belived it was effort not spent in vain.

NOTE: The sewing is in outline except the stripes on the flag, which may be either done in red outline showing narrow lines, or across the dark stripes in alternate holes making the red wider. Holes should be pricked closer together the sharper the curve, to preserve the outline better. They may be separated more on wide curves and straight lines. These drawings might be used by the teacher by placing carbon paper underneath and marking over the lines, if preferred.

Reply to "My Six"

D. B.

("My Six" October number PRIMARY EDUCATion.)

Yes, my dear friend, I, too, started in one of "those 'delightful, abandoned' farm districts," and, although "my six" numbered fourteen, I still most emphatically agree with your sentiments. Only those who have tried it know what a blessing it is to get into such a school.

Probably many teachers, (yourself included), have felt as I did then, that the school was too small, and that it was almost a disgrace to have it so small; but now, and many times since then, when my register shows multiples of fourteen, I sigh for the little school with all its drawbacks, and think how happy and content I should have been, had I then realized what "sad experience" has taught me since. Even the shrunken salary would not look so dwarfed as it did then. We are

Matanzas
Morro
Maria Teresa
Puerto Principe
Santa Clara
Santiago
San Juan
Trinidad

Viscaya

Kahs-tay-lahr

Gwahn-tah-nah-moh

Goh-mayth

Gahr-thee-ah

Hah-vah-nah

Mah-tahn-thahs

Mohrroh

Mah-ree-ah Tay-ray-sah

Poo-air-toh Preen-thee-pay

Sahn-tah Clah-rah

Sahn-tee-ah-goh

Sahn Hwahn

Tree-ni-thath (hard th)·
Veeth-cah-yah

-Harper's Weekly

The Birds' Brownies

MARY MANN MILLER Brooklyn N. Y.

UT in the woods one winter day I found one of the birds' Brownies. He was red, and so small that I almost stepped on him: but happening to look down just then, there he was, staring up at me with his big round eyes. He never moved at all and I thought

he must want me to take him in out of the cold. So I picked him up carefully in my hand and carried him home.

When I called the children to come and see the Brownie I had found, they all crowded about, and then, looking at me with their solemn eyes, they asked if he were a really, truly live Brownie? (for they had all read the Brownie books). Of course I had to tell the truth, so I said no, he wasn't a really, truly live Brownie, but I was very sure he was the very picture of one.

He had a funny round head, two big, staring goggle eyes, and a queer little mouth, as you see in the picture. We kept him several days, and each day he seemed to grow at least twenty-five years older, until at last he looked like a little shriveled-up old man.

can

Perhaps you think it isn't everybody that find Brownies. I will tell you the secret so that you can. Go into the woods and hunt about until you find a little green vine like the one in the picture, running over the ground. This is the Brownie Vine and the Brownies grow on it. The wise men, who don't know as much about Brownies as you and I do, call it partridge vine, and they think the Brownies are nothing but partridge-berries. But we know better.

When you find them you may pick a few to take home, but leave most of them for the birds' or I shall be sorry I told you about them. Now you must stick a pin right through the top of the Brownie's head. It won't hurt him, and it will make a funny little cap, and all the body he'll ever have. But where is his mouth, did you ask? Well, you'll just have to make him one yourself with the point of a pin. Be very careful not to scratch it too big. He doesn't seem to need any nose.

How do you suppose the Brownie gets his two eyes? Did you ever see any other berry with more than one? I'm almost sure I never did. Look closely at the picture of the flowers, and see if there is anything queer about them. Why, yes! The two blossoms grow out of one little knob. They always grow in pairs like this, and when they drop off, each one leaves a big round eye. Then the knob swells and swells, and turns redder and redder until at last it becomes a Brownie with goggle eyes!

But why do I call them the birds' Brownies, any more than your Brownies or my Brownies? Because for you and me they make only a them, and each Brownie helps to keep some bird from little fun and then we throw them away: but the birds eat starving in the cold winter weather when food is so hard to find. So the wise men were right too, when they called them partridge-berries even if they didn't know they were also Brownies.

Now why has Mother Nature made these Brownie-berries a bright red color? So that they can be seen easily among the dark green leaves. Mother Nature wants the birds to eat them for good reasons of her own. For while they eat the berries just because they are hungry, they are really helping her very much about her work. They are sowing

her seeds for her.

Cut open one of your red berries and you will see several hard seeds in the middle of the soft pulp. The bird swallows the berry whole and while the pulp digests, the seeds are so hard that they are not changed at all, but are ready to grow when they are dropped to the groundvery likely miles away from where they were eaten.

So the wise old dame makes the birds carry her seeds all over the world for her and plant them in new places. And so wise and so clever is she that she has planned things so that birds that like berries with hard seeds can't swallow them without doing something for her. Perhaps she makes us help too, when we carry away the Brownies. Isn't she a wonderful Mother Nature?

All winter long you can see this pretty green vine with its red Brownie-berries, for it is evergreen. Indeed, I think there is hardly a month in the year when you couldn't find at least one Brownie, either red or green. In the middle of the summer, to be sure, red ones are rather scarce and the green ones are very small-little bits of baby Brownies, with eyes bigger than ever.

Nature's Warm Carpet

(A Snow Reading)

We do not buy this carpet and it does not grow.

It comes to us out of the sky.

Some children never see this kind of carpet.

They live where it is always warm.

A high mountain-top has it for a cap all the time.

When it is clean it is white and sparkling.

Blades of green grass make the summer carpet.

Other tiny things make the winter one.

We call them snowflakes. They sometimes look like white stars.

The snow carpet is sometimes too thick to use. What shall we do about it?

How does the snow look coming down?
See if these lines tell its story:

Whene'er a snowflake leaves the sky,
It turns and turns to say "Good-bye,
Good-bye, dear cloud, so cool and gray."
Then lightly hastens on his way.

Did you ever see them do that?
Watch when the next snow falls.
Why do we call snow a warm carpet?

It is not warm to us.

An Experiment

F. G. P.

So much is being done in these days to furnish children's minds with the best material for thought, and to interest them in the childhood, growth and life-work of great poets, authors, sculptors and painters, that a short series of lessons has been recently given in a Boston school-room, on some of the great musicians.

The teacher felt that the links in the chain of literary interest were being welded by chapters from the lives of authors and poets who are best known; that the new impulse in drawing had awakened an ever-increasing interest in the men and women who created masterpieces in painting and sculpture, and that music, the sister of painting, needed just such an interest aroused in the lives of those who smote the chords and set all hearts a-quiver with emotion.

The early days of these geniuses have a touch of pathos in them, and are an inspiration to labor and to have a noble aim in life, which has made little eyes open wide, and little ears drink in all that could be told.

Mozart, the young pianist, Beethoven whose growing deafness is always pathetic, Mendelssohn the glorious songwriter, Handel whose music caught the twitter of the birds and the murmur of the leaves of the forest, Haydn who is so closely associated in our minds with Handel;-these,

and other more modern singers as well, have been talked about and made as alive as little boys and girls are now.

And this attempt has borne fruit; it has been an actual help to a constantly growing pleasure in the regular music lessons. What might easily degenerate into dull routine has been brighter and cheerier for these acquaintances. Their names may go from the little minds, but the inspiration of their lives can never end. The school-room in which this has been done has its poets' corner - Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Field, Lucy Larcom, Celia Thaxter, and Mrs. Whitney, being of the number to be found there; its musicians' corner, in which a few well-known faces greet the eye, and the painters' corner where Raphael and Michael Angelo reign supreme. The fourth corner is the children's corner. Its special feature being copies of music lessons and songs, original drawings from the hands and brains of the young workers of the school-room. Poetry is copied and learned, but as a natural expression in conventional dress, has not yet found utterance. The teacher hears it however in the soft sweet voices of her singing class, and feels it in the little outbursts of tenderness and good-will shown to each other by the boys and girls. In this matterof-fact age too much cannot be done to emphasize the poetry of living, and to create a love for its natural expressions verse, pictures, music. These three graces well deserve to go hand in hand with Faith, Hope and Charity.

For Making a Mimeograph.

Add three ounces of water to one and one-half ounces of white glue. Heat in a water bath (an oatmeal dish answers the purpose very well) until the glue is melted. Then add six ounces of glycerine and pour the mixture into a hollow dish to cool. Place the dish where it will be level, and skim off the air bubbles as they rise to the surface with some kind of a straight edge. The pad will be ready for use after standing six or eight hours. Should it prove too hard to copy well, melt it over and add more glycerine, or, if it should prove too soft to wear well, melt it over and add more glue. To use it a bottle of hektograph ink must be obtained. Write the copy and place ink side down on the pad and let it stay a minute or two. Then remove and from the impression let fifty or one hundred copies be taken. After using, wash the pad off by very gently rubbing it over with a sponge wet with tepid water.

As to the cost- the glue can be had for five cents, the glycerine for twenty-five cents, and if a suitable dish is not at hand a tin 8x10 inches and about half an inch deep can had for ten cents. The hektograph ink will cost only

twenty-five cents for the violet and fifty cents for the black, but a bottle will last a long time.

A good ink for this purpose may be made by dissolving one dram of purple aniline in one ounce of water. - The Plan Book

Our Carlo

EMMA COOLIDGE WESTON

(To be read to the children.)

Did you ever see a reddish brown dog with a tail that knowing eyes? That was like our Carlo. curved up over his back, long, hanging, silky ears, and kind,

He came to us when he was little, and we all petted him like a baby. If little Willie sat in one chair by the fire and patted the next chair, Carlo would get up into it and put boy stroked and hugged him to his heart's content. Carlo his head on his paws in Willie's lap, to sleep, while the little could give the right paw to shake hands, and could roll over and over and speak for his breakfast.

When Charley went to the pasture with the cows, Carlo went, too, and barked at them if they were going wrong or right, either for he was only a puppy then; but afterward he learned to be a real help in driving cows and in keeping the squirrels off the corn and woodchucks out of the garden. Oh! we all thought a great deal of Carlo, and he knew it and liked it, too.

But one day he had his feelings hurt. It was the day that Baby Johnnie was first brought out of mother's room for us to see him. Carlo did not like to see the baby in father's arms, with all of us gathered about, touching its mites of fingers and toes, and, oh! so gently kissing its soft cheeks. and he usually had all the petting himself. Poor Carlo! It was not his own baby brother,

When father noticed it, we made a place for Carlo in the circle, and father had him put up his paws by the baby while we told him all about it. He seemed to understand, for he kissed the little dress when father told him to, and went and lay down in his place; and by the time Johnnie could run out to play, Carlo had learned to like him and to take good care of him.

One bright afternoon father and the boys were going to the hay-field, and Johnnie wanted to go so as to ride home on the load of hay. So they rode behind the oxen, down across the brook where the ducks swim, out through the blueberry pasture, till they came to where the new hay lay in beds ready to be tumbled together and loaded on to the wagon.

They put Johnnie on a large, flat rock, because it would hurt his bare feet to walk where the grass had been cut. Carlo came and sat beside him till a woodchuck whistled; then he thought the little boy would be safe while he went away a few minutes. When Carlo came back, Johnnie was playing with some small stones and singing "There is a happy land"; so the doggie was satisfied and trotted back to the whistler.

But no barking could get chucky out of his hole, and again Carlo found Johnnie happy, playing with a grandpalong-legs. Just then Carlo heard a red squirrel, and he had to go and see about it.

But now, when he came back to the large, flat rock, Carlo could not see any straw hat with black eyes looking out from under it, nor any blue dress with pink toes peeping from under it. Poor Carlo was very anxious about Johnnie. He went to father for help, and they all wondered what troubled him.

They soon understood, for he would bark, then run to the rock and whine. So father said, "Oh! he has lost Johnnie. Lift him up where the good dog can see him!" And there was Johnnie, safe on the load of hay. He had gone to them because he was tired of his rock, but they had carried him, and so Carlo could not smell his track to find him.

Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, do not dream them all day long;
And that will make your life and work forever
One grand sweet song.-Kingsley

A

Story of William Tell

T Altorf, about two miles from Lucerne, they saw the monument, erected upon the spot where Tell shot the apple from his son's head. The monument is made of bronze, and Tell is pictured standing upright, bold and brave, with his bow and arrows in his hand. Moritz told them the story as they were sailing across the lake. He thought they had heard it many, many times; but it was always new to them, and perhaps you may like to read it once more; for the story of a brave man never tires. Many years ago, when the king of Austria ruled Switzerland, he sent a bailiff, named Gessler, to govern the canton of Lucerne or Uri. Gessler hung the hat of Austria upon a long pole, in the market place of Altorf, and gave orders that no one should pass it without uncovering his head.

But one Sunday, an honest peasant, named William Tell, passed several times in front of the hat, and did no reverence to it, as Gessler had commanded; this was soon told to Gessler.

So, on Monday morning, he called Tell before him, and asked him why he had not obeyed his command and doffed his hat.

And Tell answered: "It was, sir, from carelessness and not from contempt that it happened. Pardon me, I beg, and it shall not happen again."

Now Tell was a good marksman with a cross-bow, and a better could not be found; and he had three beautiful children, who were very dear to him.

The bailiff then sent for these; and when they had come, he said, "Tell, which of these children do you love most?" Tell answered, "Sir, I love them all alike."

Then the bailiff said, "Well, Tell, you are a good marksman I hear; and now you will have to show your skill before me, by shooting an apple from the head of one of your children. And take care that you hit the apple; for if you hit it not at the first shot, your life shall be the forfeit." Tell was struck with horror, and begged Gessler that he would not make him do this; for he could not shoot at his dear child, he would rather die.

Then Gessler said, "That you must do, or both you and the child shall die!" Then Tell saw plainly that he must do it; so he prayed to God earnestly that He would protect him and his dear child. Then he took his cross-bow, stretched it, and placed an arrow upon it, at the same moment hiding another under his cape. Gessler himself placed the apple upon the boy's head, a lad not more than six years old. Tell's arrow went straight through the apple, and did not touch a hair of the child's head. The shot surprised Gessler, and he praised the archer's skill. Then he asked Tell what he meant by concealing an arrow under his cape.

Then Tell said, "Well, sir, since you have promised me my life I will tell you the truth; -"I intended, had I hit my child, to have shot you with the other arrow, and I would not have missed!"

Gessler was angry at this and said, "Well, Tell, I promised your life, and that promise I shall keep; but I will have you brought to a place where you shall never again see the sun or the moon, and where you can do me no harm." Then he ordered his servants to bind Tell and place him in a boat.

He himself went with them, that he might see him safely locked in prison. And he took Tell's bow and arrows for his own. So they placed the hero in a boat, intending to cross the lake and lock him up in a dark tower for the rest of his days.

Then one of the servants said to Gessler, "Sir, you see our distress and the danger to our lives, and that the masters of the boat are not skilled in guiding it. Now, Tell is a strong man, and can manage a boat well; pray, therefore, let him do it."

So Tell was unbound, and he steered the boat skilfully; yet he kept his eyes upon his bow and arrows, and watched for a chance to spring on shore.

Soon he saw a ledge of rock, and thought he might leap out there. So he called to the boatmen to row hard for