this is removed, the dust swept up and saved for the precious particles that may be in it. There is no such thing as a trifle in this mint.

Gold and silver are in unsuspected places. They are in the air, in the water, under foot. There is little you can call "dirt" in most parts of the Mint without being guilty of a misnomer. And just here we may as well gossip by the way about the curious domestic fashions within these walls.

For one of them, they wash their clothes once a year! The rough dresses of the men in the furnace room, and out of which they husk themselves daily when the work is done, never leave the Mint after they enter it, until they have been washed span-clean. The method of washing is unique. They just put them in the furnaces, and they are cleansed in a twinkling. A ten-dollar suit may be worth five after it is burned up, and an old apron bring money enough to buy a new one.

When they take up carpets they do not beat them with whips and broomsticks, after the manner of good housewives, filling their lungs with dust and the premises with confusion, but they just bundle them bodily into the fire; and it is generally calculated that the destruction of an old carpet, after three years of wear, will about buy a new

one.

A mint is the only place in the world where a conflagration produces its own insurance money. The ashes of these clothes and carpets are carefully gathered, sifted and washed, and out come the truant gold and silver they contain.

You see scales, the most delicate pieces of mechanism. The wave of a butterfly's wing could blow

the truth away from them. They hang in glass houses of their own. "Let us weigh an-animal. Let us go hunting. Let us catch a fly." We captured a victim and drove him upon the scale as if he were a bullock. A weight was put in the other dish, and our mammoth made it kick the beam. The long, slender index depending from the balancing point, and describing an arc on the graduated ivory when the scales are moved, swung through ten spaces when the monster was put aboard!

The brown house-fly pulled down the dish at thirty-one thousandths of seven and a half grains --and he was only in good flying order at that. Then one wing was lifted upon the scale, and it astonished us to see what a regiment of heavy figures it took to tell how light it was, that bit of an atmospheric oar.

Have you never thought that things may be so enormously little as to be tremendously great? We go to the Assaying Department, where they weigh next to nothing, and keep an account of it. Here are scales where a girl's eyelash will give the index the swing of a pendulum. The smallest weight is an atom of aluminum, the lightest of the mineral family, that you could carry in your eye and not think there was a beam in it. Its weight is 5-10 of 1-100 of 1-2 of 1-24 of one ounce. It would take ninety-six hundred of those metallic motes to weigh

a humming-bird.

BENJAMIN F. TAYLOR.

Biography.-Benjamin Franklin Taylor was born in New York in 1822, and educated at Madison University, of which institution his father was President.

Taylor's career has been full of romantic incident.

For many

years he discharged the duties of a journalist. His writings show a knowledge of both the last and the present generation of the American people. His style is characterized by artistic taste and a careful handling of details. Under his treatment even dry subjects become bright and interesting.

Of Taylor's numerous works we may mention the following as good specimens of his genius: "Pictures of Life in Camp and Field," "Old-Time Pictures," "The World on Wheels," "Songs of Yesterday," and "Between the Gates."

· Language. — How do the short sentences used in the lesson affect our interest?

45.-AN EXPLOIT OF SIR WILLIAM WALLACE.N

ex ploit', a great deed. prow'ess, bravery.

aux Il'ia ry (awg zil' ya rỹ),

helping; aiding.

chăm'pi on, one ready to fight

all who offer against him. do mìnʼion (min'yŭn), rule.

ap pre hěnʼsion, alarm. fạl'eòn, a bird of prey. grappling-I'rons (ûrns), instruments for holding fast a vessel. com pressed', pressed together; brought within narrow space. eon ferred', granted.

During the brief career of the celebrated patriot, Sir William Wallace, and when his arms had for a time expelled the English invaders from his native country, he is said to have undertaken a voyage to France, with a small band of trusty friends, to try what his presence-for he was respected through all countries for his prowessmight do to induce the French monarch to send to Scotland a body of auxiliary forces, or other assistance, to aid the Scots in regaining their independence.

The Scottish champion was on board a small vessel, and steering for the port of Dieppe, when a sail appeared in the distance, which the mariners re

garded at first with doubt and apprehension, and at last with confusion and dismay. Wallace demanded

to know what was the cause of their alarm.

The captain of the ship informed him, that the tall vessel which was bearing down, with the purpose of boarding that which he commanded, was the ship of a celebrated rover, equally famed for his courage, strength of body, and successful piracies. It was commanded by a brave man named Thomas de Longueville, a Frenchman by birth, but by practice one of those pirates who called themselves friends to the sea, and enemies to all those who sailed upon that element.

He attacked and plundered vessels of all nations, like one of the ancient Norse sea-kings, as they were termed, whose dominion was upon the mountain waves. The master added, that no vessel could escape the rover by flight, so speedy was the craft he commanded; and that no crew, however hardy, could hope to resist him, when, as was his usual mode of combat, he threw himself on board a ship at the head of his followers.

Wallace smiled sternly, while the master of the ship, with alarm in his countenance and tears in his eyes, described to him the certainty of their being captured by the Red Rover, a name given to Longueville because he usually displayed the bloodred flag which he had now hoisted.

"I will clear the narrow seas of this rover," said Wallace.

Then calling together some ten or twelve of his own followers-Boyd, Kerlie, Seaton, and others-to whom the dust of the most desperate battle was like the breath of life, he commanded them to arm

themselves and lie flat upon the deck, so as to be out of sight. He ordered the mariners below, excepting such as were absolutely necessary to manage the vessel; and he gave the master instructions, upon pain of death, to steer so that, while the vessel had the appearance of attempting to fly, it would in fact permit the Red Rover to come up with them and do his worst.

Wallace himself then lay down on the deck, that nothing might be seen which would intimate any purpose of resistance. In a quarter of an hour De Longueville's vessel ran aboard that of the champion, and the Red Rover, casting out grappling-irons to make sure of his prize, jumped on the deck in complete armor, followed by his men, who gave a terrible shout, as if victory had already been secured by them.

But the armed Scots started up at once, and the Rover found himself unexpectedly engaged with men accustomed to consider victory as secure when they were only opposed as one to two or three. Wallace himself rushed on the pirate captain, and a dreadful strife began between them, with such fury that the others suspended their own battle to look on, and seemed by common consent to refer the issue of the strife to the result of the combat between the two chiefs.

The pirate fought as well as man could do; but Wallace's strength was beyond that of ordinary mortals. He dashed the sword from the Rover's hand, and placed him in such peril that, to avoid being cut down, he was fain to close with the Scottish champion, in hopes of overpowering him in the struggle. In this also he was foiled,