When the young fall from the nest I have watched your anxiety, and when danger has threatened them I have seen you brace up your courage; and how angry then did you look, with your little feathers all standing out as if you were ready for a fight!

When the storms had tumbled down the nest you had built with so much trouble, how distressed you seemed, and how industrious you were to build another!

So, little birdies, I found that, like man, you have your joys, your cares, your troubles, and your sorrows. The stormy billows of life are also for you. I love you the more for this. I wish I were a poet, so that my lyre could sing songs to you, and I might tell you a softer tale than that which the nightingale tells to us.

PAUL DU CHAILLU.

[Abridgment from "Life under the Equator," by Paul Du Chaillu. Copyright, 1896, by Harper and Brothers.]

'Tis heart-broken music,

That sweet, faltering strain,

Like a mingled memory,

Half ecstasy, half pain.

Surely thus to sing, robin,

Thou must have in sight
Beautiful skies behind the shower,
And dawn beyond the night.

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL.

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,

Ye cannot rival for one hour

October's bright blue weather,

When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,

And Golden-Rod is dying fast,

And lanes with grapes are fragrant ;

When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burs

Without a sound of warning;

Zuber.

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,

Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.

O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year

October's bright blue weather.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm ; Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; And every sense and every heart is joy.

JAMES THOMSON.

It was near Wheeling. A lad named John Wetzel, one of a noted border family of coarse, powerful, illiterate Indian fighters, had gone out from the fortified village in which his kinsfolk were living, to hunt horses. Another boy went with him.

There were several stray horses, one being a mare which belonged to Wetzel's sister, with a colt, and the girl had promised him the colt if he would bring the mare back.

The two boys were vigorous young fellows, accustomed to life in the forest; and they hunted high and low, and finally heard the sound of horse bells in a thicket.

Running joyfully forward they fell into the hands of four Indians, who had caught the horses and tied them in the thicket, so that by the tinkling of their bells they might lure into the ambush any man who came out to hunt them up.

Young Wetzel made a dash for liberty, but received a shot which broke his arm, and then surren

dered and cheerfully accompanied his captors; while his companion, totally unnerved, hung back crying, and was promptly tomahawked.

Early next morning the party struck the Ohio, at a point where there was a clearing. The cabins on this clearing were deserted, the settlers having taken refuge in a fort because of the Indian ravages; but the stock had been left running in the woods.

One of the Indians shot a hog and tossed it into a canoe they had hidden under the bank. The captive was told to enter the canoe and lie down; three Indians then got in, while the fourth started to swim across the river.

Fortunately for the captured boy, three of the settlers had chosen this day to return to the abandoned clearing and look after the loose stock. They reached the place shortly after the Indians, and just in time to hear the report of the rifle when the hog was shot.

The owner of the hogs, instead of suspecting that there were Indians near by, jumped to the conclusion that a Kentucky boat had landed, and that the immigrants were shooting his hogs for the people who drifted down the Ohio in boats were not, when hungry, overscrupulous concerning the right to stray live stock.

Running forward, the three men had almost reached the river, when they heard the loud snort