it!) that if it had then and there burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would have seemed a natural and inevitable consequence, for which it had expressly labored.

16. The kettle had had the last of its solo performance. It persevered with undiminished ardor; but the Cricket took first fiddle and kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star. There was an indescribable little trill and tremble in it at its loudest, which suggested its being carried off its legs, and made to leap again, by its own intense enthusiasm. Yet they went very well together, the Cricket and the kettle. The burden of the song was still the same; and louder, louder, louder still, they sung it in their emulation.

17. The fair little listener-for fair she was and young, though something of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don't myself object to that-lighted a candle, glanced at the Haymaker on the top of the clock (who was getting in a pretty average crop of minutes), and looked out of the window, where she saw nothing, owing to the darkness, but her own face imaged in the glass. And my opinion is (and so would yours have been), that she might have looked a long way and seen nothing half so agreeable. When she came back and sat down in her former seat, the Cricket and the kettle were still keeping it up, with a perfect fury of competition. The kettle's weak side clearly being, that he didn't know when he was beat.

18. There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle making play in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle sticking to him in his own way; no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle not to be finished. Until at last, they got so jumbled together, in the hurryskurry, helter-skelter of the match, that whether the kettle

chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to decide with any thing like certainty.

19. But of this there is no doubt, that the kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, each, his fire side song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain person who, on the instant, approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, Welcome home, old fellow! Welcome home, my boy!

XXI.-I'M GROWING OLD.

JOHN G. SAXE.

1. My days pass pleasantly away,

My nights are blest with sweetest sleep,

I feel no symptoms of decay,

I have no cause to mourn nor weep,

My foes are impotent and shy,

My friends are neither false nor cold;
And yet, of late, I often sigh,

I'm growing old!

2. My growing talk of olden times,
My growing thirst for early news,
My growing apathy to rhymes,
My growing love of easy shoes,
My growing hate of crowds and noise,
My growing fear of taking cold,
All whisper in the plainest voice,
I'm growing old!

3. I'm growing fonder of my staff,
I'm growing dimmer in the eyes,
I'm growing fainter in my laugh,

I'm growing deeper in my sighs,

I'm growing careless of my dress,
I'm growing frugal of my gold,
I'm growing wise, I'm growing-yes—
I'm growing old!

4. I see it in my changing taste,

I see it in my changing hair,

I see it in my growing waist,

I see it in my growing heir;
A thousand signs proclaim the truth,
As plain as truth was ever told,
That even in my vaunted youth,

I'm growing old!

5. Ah me! my very laurels breathe
The tale in my reluctant ears,
And every boon the Hours bequeath,
But makes me debtor to the Years!
E'en Flattery's honeyed words declare
The secret she would fain withhold,
And tells me in "How young you are!"
I'm growing old!

6. Thanks for the years, whose rapid flight My somber muse too sadly sings! Thanks for the gleams of golden light

That tint the darkness of their wings! The light that beams from out the sky,

Those heavenly mansions to unfold, Where all are blest, and none may sigh, "I'm growing old!

XXII. THE LONG AGO.

B. F. TAYLOR.

1. Oh! a wonderful stream is the river Time,
As it runs through the realm of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime,
As it blends in the ocean of years!

2. How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow,
And the summers like birds between,

And the years in the sheaf, how they come and they go
On the river's breast with its ebb and flow,
As it glides in the shadow and sheen!

3. There's a Magical Isle up the river Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing.
There's a cloudless sky and tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,

And the Junes with the roses are straying.

4. And the name of this Isle is "the Long Ago,"
And we bury our treasures there;

There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow,
There are heaps of dust-oh! we love them so—
And there are trinkets and tresses of hair.

5. There are fragments of songs that nobody sings,
There are parts of an infant's prayer,
There's a lute unswept and a harp without strings,
There are broken vows and pieces of rings,

And the garments our dead used to wear.

6. There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore By the mirage is lifted in air,

And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the river was fair.

7. Oh! remembered for aye be that blessed isle,
All the day of life until night;

And when evening glows with its beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing in slumbers awhile,

May the greenwood of soul be in sight.

[Let the pupil carefully study the similes in this selec tion, and show wherein the resemblance consists.] What is compared to a river, and why? to an ocean? to an island? 5. What is meant by "songs that nobody sings"? Is this piece joyous or sad? Does it require abrupt or lengthened tones? What emotions are expressed in it?

XXIII.-THINKING AND REVERIE NOT THE SAME.

J. G. HOLLAND.

1. It rained yesterday; and, though it is midsummer, it is unpleasantly cool to-day. The sky is clear, with almost a steel-blue tint, and the meadows are very deeply green. The shadows among the woods are black and massive, and the whole face of nature looks painfully clean, like that of a healthy little boy who has been bathed in a chilly room with very cold water. I notice that I am sensitive to a change like this, and that my mind goes very reluctantly to its task this morning. I look out from my window, and think how delightful it would be to take a seat in the sun, down under the fence across the street.

2. It seems to me that if I could sit there awhile and get warm, I could think better and write better. Toasting in the sunlight is conducive rather to reverie than thought, or I should be inclined to try it. This reluctance to commence labor, and this looking out of the window and longing for an accession of strength cr warmth or inspiration or something or other not easily named, calls back to me an experience of childhood.

3. It was summer, and I was attending school. The seats were hard, and the lessons were dry, and the walls of the school-room were very cheerless. An indulgent, sweet