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absolute right and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable-afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity of the universe.

1. What does the stainless ivory in the cubes indicate? 2. What is the meaning of the veins, streaks, and spots and the dark crimson flush in the spheres?

3. Are the letters L, I, E, always visible? Does this mean that lies are not always known to be lies to the person who tells them, or that they may deceive the person to whom they are told?

4. Does Dr. Holmes mean to imply that it is natural for a little child to lie when he says that the spheres are the most convenient things in the world?

5. What does Dr. Holmes mean when he says that the spheres are apt to roll into the wrong corner?

6. How does Timidity teach a child to lie? How does Good-nature lead him to lie? What are some of the "polite lies" that help to make the cubes roll?

7. Which cuts most deeply a substance upon which it is rubbed—a rasp, a file, or a silken sleeve?

8. Which causes the most lies, Timidity, Good-nature or Polite-behavior?

9. Do you think the schoolmistress is right? If so, what better reasons are there for telling the truth than mere convenience and the inconvenience of lying?

10. What do you understand by "against the peace and dignity of the universe?"

11. Do you think the schoolmistress would agree with the Autocrat in his last statement as to the way in which children are taught the difference between right and wrong?

12. Do you think if a child is first taught that lying is unprofitable he will without further assistance learn that lying is wrong in itself?

13. Do you gain from the whole selection the idea that all lies, even the polite lies of society and the common and apparently harmless lies of business life, are always and wholly wrong?

I

THE LOST CHILD

By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

WANDERED down the sunny glade
And ever mused, my love, of thee;

My thoughts, like little children, played,
As gayly and as guilelessly.

[graphic][merged small]

If any chanced to go astray,

Moaning in fear of coming harms, Hope brought the wanderer back alway, Safe nestled in her snowy arms.

From that soft nest the happy one
Looked up at me and calmly smiled;
Its hair shone golden in the sun,

And made it seem a heavenly child.

Dear Hope's blue eyes smiled mildly down,
And blest it with a love so deep,
That, like a nursling of her own,

It clasped her neck and fell asleep.

[graphic]

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

D

By GRACE E. SELLON

OWN the street, about a mile from the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, stands a square, three-story colonial dwelling house, sheltered by pines and great English elms and surrounded by flowering shrubs. In this home, for many years known as Elmwood, the great American poet and essayist was born February 22, 1819, and it was here that he lived during the greater part of his life. In the woods and meadows that lay about Elmwood in the poet's childhood he spent much time, for he liked especially to be out-of-doors; and so it was that in his earliest years he began to feel the great love for flowers, birds and trees that made him able in later life to show to the readers of his poems how much beauty there is in the very commonest things of nature.

However, all of the things he liked were not outof-doors. In his father's library were more than three thousand books, and he began when only a small boy to choose for himself favorite authors. He seems to have been unusually fond of books, for in a little note written when he was eight years old, his first letter, so far as any one knows,-he tells his brother, "I read French stories," and adds in a postscript, "I have got three books." The next year, in a letter to the same brother he writes, "I have got quite a library."

After learning his letters and other simple things at an elementary school, Lowell was sent when about nine years old to a higher school, where he was thoroughly taught Latin, and otherwise prepared for his entrance into Harvard College in 1834. He was then only fifteen years of age, yet he had such decided tastes in his studies that he was not always willing to give attention to the work required in his college courses, but would follow his own inclinations in his reading. The result was, that though he gained such a reputation among his class-mates for appreciation of literature and ability in original composition that he was made one of the editors of Harvardiana, the college paper, and was chosen in his senior year to write the class poem, yet he was looked upon with growing disapproval by his instructors, because of his irregular ways. At length, it is told, he completely disgraced himself, on the day he was chosen class poet, by rising at the close of the evening prayer service and bowing solemnly to right and left. As punishment for this and all preceding misconduct, he was sent to Concord to continue his studies under a private teacher, and was not allowed to return to Harvard until after classday. Nevertheless, he wrote his poem and later had it printed, for his friends, in a little pamphlet.

After receiving his degree from Harvard in 1838, Lowell decided upon the law as the profession most suitable for him to follow, for at that time a literary career in the United States held out no assurance of a living, even to the best writers. In the preceding year he had written to his intimate friend Shackford: "I thought your brother Charles was

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