boys, what I say: insist on having good air; for impure air, though it may not always kill you, is always bad for your health."

DOG was lying upon a manger full of hay. An Ox, being hungry, came near, and offered to eat of the hay; but the envious, ill-natured cur, getting up and snarling at him, would not suffer him to touch it. Upon which the Ox, in the bitterness of his heart, said, “A curse light on thee for a malicious beast who can neither eat hay thyself, nor will allow those to eat it who can!"

MORAL. Live and let live.

THE COMPASS.

An'-chor, a heavy iron to hold the
ship. by being fixed to the ground.
Re-veal'-ing, disclosing.

Glis'-ten-ing, glittering.
Ha'-ven, a harbour.

PERSON does not

need to go to sea in order to find out how lost and helpless a sailor would be in the midst of the ocean if he had no compass. A few summers ago, I passed some days at one of the Isles of Shoals, a small rocky

Piv-ot, pin or point on which anything turns.

Prop'-er-ty, a peculiar quality, a possession.

Vis'-i-ble, that may be seen.

group in the Atlantic Ocean, ten miles from the coast of New Hampshire, and I used to go out almost every day in a boat, fishing for cod and haddock.

2. One misty morning, I remember, I started with three or four others for one of the favourite fishing places, about half a mile off. We had been there for an hour or two, and had caught a few very fine

fish, when some

one, looking up, cried out, "Where is the Island?"

3. We all looked around, but the Island was gone. The mist had changed into a dense fog, which had gathered over our rocky abode, and hid it completely from our view. Nor was there any object in sight, except another of the Island boats, containing a fishing-party like ourselves. We called out to them, "Where is the Island?" To which one of them replied, "It has drifted out to sea!"

4. I cannot tell you how entirely lost we seemed for a few minutes. Everyone gave his opinion as to the direction in which the Island was; but as our boat had been floating about without an anchor, and had consequently changed its position every moment, it was all guess-work, and we might have rowed about for a whole day without finding the object of our search. While we were talking the matter over, we heard the large bell of the hotel ring, which of course told us the way we were to go, in order to reach the Island.

5. We afterwards learned that the regular frequenters of this Island, considering it unsafe to go a hundred yards from the shore without a compass, always took a pocket-compass with them in case a sudden fog should wrap the Island from their sight.

6. Admirable invention! I often wonder that a thing so valuable can be so small, simple and cheap. It is nothing but a pivot, a needle, and a card, which you can buy for a few shillings, carry it in your pocket or dangle it at the end of a watch

chain. Yet, small and trifling as it is, a ship's company, that should find itself in the middle of the ocean without a compass, would consider it a great favour to be allowed to buy one for many hundred pounds.

7. But stop; some of the young folks who live far from the sea coast, and have never seen the magnetic needle quivering in its box under its glass lid, may not know exactly what a compass is. Well, you must

know there is a kind of iron ore, of a dark gray colour, found in iron-mines in many parts of the world, which is called load-stone, or natural magnet. It is about as heavy as the common iron ore, and looks like it, except that it is a little more glistening.

8. It has, however, most wonderful and mysterious properties. One is, that it attracts to itself iron and other metals. Another property of the magnet is equally mysterious, and far more important to man. If you take a bar of iron or steel, and rub it against a loadstone, and then suspend it carefully by a thread, it will always point north and south, or very nearly north and south. Now, a compass is nothing more than a small steel needle, which, having been rubbed against a magnet in a certain manner, is balanced with great nicety upon a pivot, and the whole enclosed in a box.

9. That needle points toward the North Star,

and serves to guide the mariner over the trackless deep when neither sun nor star is visible. It does not tell him where he is, but it tells him in what direction he is sailing, and it tells him, with the help of other instruments, in what direction he must sail in order to reach the haven to which he is bound.

1. As on through life's journey we go day by day,

There are two whom we meet at each turn of

the way,

To help or to hinder, to bless or to ban,

And the names of these two are I Can't " and "I Can."