two days. The weather was beautiful, and we made the most of it. As I had a great desire to shoot a kangaroo, we went after them that day. We commenced by lying down in a field and eating luncheon, and then walked about some low hills a mile behind the house. We soon saw kangaroos, their heads peering at us above high ferns and grass. Long shots proving useless, except to make them go bounding away up-hill in their very peculiar and mad-looking manner, we altered our plans and sent the keeper round the other side of the hills, while we posted ourselves in convenient spots. And soon back they all came, a jumping mob of over fifty kangaroos, both large and small. We all shot one or two, and I could have shot more if I had so chosen, as they came quite close to me. The proper thing to do is to hunt them with dogs, which requires good riding: they say it is great fun, but I had no chance of trying it. We left all our kangaroos on the ground where they fell, merely cutting off their tails, which make tolerable soup, and are the only portion of the whole animal that is fit for eating. Kangaroos are regarded as a great nuisance, for they nibble at all the best pasture.

9. We made most admirable shooting afterwards at cockatoos and laughing jackasses' with a small Henri rifle-the most deadly I ever shot with -at two hundred yards. I must tell you, that after I had shot that object of my ambition—a kangaroo

er

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-I felt no sort of exultation; on the contrary, I thought the proceeding a mean and unsatisfactory act. The next day we walked and drove about, shot black swans and black geese, watched fat cattle being selected out of large herds for the

market by men on horseback, looked over the
sheep-shearing and washing houses, saw great
flocks of white cockatoos in the fields, and thought
it all a most charming life.

Adapted from the Log Letters from the Challenger,' by Lord
G. CAMPBELL. By permission of Messrs. MACMILLAN and Co.
! Exultation, proud rejoicing.

THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER.

BESIDE yon straggling fence that skirts the way
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,
There in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
The village master taught his little school.
A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew:
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited1 glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned.
Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
The village all declared how much he knew ;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,2
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge.
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill;
For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still,
While words of learnèd length, and thund'ring sound,
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.
GOLDSMITH.

1 Counterfeited, pretended.
2 Presage, foretell.

1. DID you ever ride in an old-fashioned stage. coach? cramped in your back, cramped in your legs, with a 'crick' in your neck, while you were packed in and strapped in so closely, that it was next to impossible to move a toe or a finger! Was the day hot and dusty, and had the tired horses hill after hill to crawl and climb up? Was some fellowpassenger's knee boring a hole in your back, and did you bump, and thump, and bob about, hour

after hour, unable to sleep, and too weary almost to live, till, when you drew up at last to some little country tavern, you didn't care whether you ever got out or not; whether you ever ate, or drank, or laughed again; whether your trunk was safe, or lost on the road miles back?

2. Well, if you have not experienced all this, perhaps your father, or mother, or uncle, or aunt has; and they will tell you that it is one of the slow methods in which people used to travel before railroads and cars were invented.

3. 'Ah!' you say, 'but stages were safer than railroad cars ! '

Were they? They never tipped over, I suppose, or rolled over into a ditch on a dark night, or had defective wheels, or drunken drivers, or shying horses, or anything of that sort?

And if anybody was very ill, or dying at a distance, they might not have been buried weeks, I suppose, before their friends could reach them?

I

4. Well, people after a while thought they might travel faster than this, and quite as safely too. George Stephenson, the great Railway engineer, was one of the first who thought this, and he worked hard and long to make it possible. want to tell you about him, because it seems to me quite beautiful that a poor uneducated boy, as he was, should have brought so great a thing to pass. I rejoice in it, because I love to think that, in our country, our most useful and best men have, many of them, been very poor and humble when young;