Made to tread the mills of toil, Quick and treacherous sands of sin. J. G. Whittier. DEAR BILL: HARRY'S LETTER. HERE I am in Lincolnshire. Now I'll tell you what I want. I want you to come down here for the holidays. Don't be afraid. Ask your sister to ask your mother to ask your father to let you come. It's only ninety miles. If you're out of pocket-money, you can walk, and beg a lift now and then, or swing by the dickeys. Put on corduroys, and don't care for cut behind. The two prentices, George and Nick, are here to be made farmers of, and brother Frank is took home from school to help in agriculture. We like farming very much; it's capital fun. Us four have got a gun, and go out shooting; it's a famous good one, and sure to go off if you don't full cock it. Tiger is to be our shooting dog as soon as he has left off killing the sheep. He's a real savage, and worries cats beautiful. Before father comes down, we mean to bait our bull with him. There's plenty of new rivers about, and we're going a fishing as soon as we have mended our top joint. We've killed one of our sheep on the sly to get gentles. We've a pony, too, to ride upon when we can catch him, but he's loose in the paddock, and has neither mane nor tail to signify to lay hold If your mother of. Isn't it prime, Bill? You must come. won't give your father leave to allow you, run away. There's a pond full of frogs, but we won't pelt them till you come; but let it be before Sunday, as there's our own orchard to rob, and the fruits to be gathered on Monday. If you like sucking raw eggs, we know where the hens lay, and mother don't; and I'm bound there's lots of birds' nests. Do come, Bill, and I'll show you the wasp's nest, and everything to make you comfortable. I dare say you could borrow your father's volunteer musket of him without his knowing it; but be sure any how to bring the ramrod, as we've mislaid ours by firing it off. Don't forget some bird-lime, Bill, and some fish-hooks, and some different sorts of shot, and some gunpowder, and a gentle-box, and some flints, some May-flies, and a powder-horn, and a landing-net, and a dog-whistle, and some porcupinequills, and a bullet-mould, and a trolling-winch, and a shotbelt, and a tin-can. You pay for 'em, Bill, and I'll owe it you. Your old friend and school-fellow, HARRY. Thomas Hood. A QUESTION. WHEN yet was ever found a mother Who'd give her booby for another? John Gay. THE BOY'S APPEAL. H, why must my face be washed so clean, When you very well know, as you often have seen, You rub as hard as ever you can, And your hands are rough, to my sorrow; THE FATHER'S ADVICE To his Son going to Seek his Fortune. NOW, my boy, remember three things: "Fear God; be kind to your horse; and keep your bowels open." Hildreth. AGAINST BOYS. CERTAIN feeble poetasters are always mourning that they are no longer in the Classical or Commercial Seminary of their younger days, but I believe that there are few honest men who do not look back upon their school-days with a shudder. I was not a very bad boy myself, I believe, but the comparison of my Now with my Then is certainly not odious. I can now meet a cat without wishing to kill it; I can behold two dogs without yearning to set them by the ears; I can listen to the twitter of a hedge-sparrow without longing for a horsepistol; I can pass in the street an individual smaller than myself without experiencing an uncontrollable desire to snatch off his сар, and throw it over the wall. When I go to church, I take a church-service in my hand, and not a novel of similar external appearance; I do not distend my pockets with filberts purloined from my host's dinner-table; I do not smoke bits of cane until I am sick; I do not think it ungentlemanly to ride in a 'bus; I am no longer irresistibly attracted to any barrow full of strange delicacies, such as Albert rock or Alicam-pane, and if I were, the fruit of all others I should leave untouched would be exposed slices of cocoa-nut. Upon the whole, in short, I flatter myself that my relations with society are improved since I was that dreadful being-a boy. If all the grown-up people in the world should suddenly fail, what a frightful thing would society become reconstructed by boys! Chambers' Journal. WE WHICH IS THE HAPPIEST. HICH is the happiest; a king, a lover repairing to his first interview, a successful author, an actor who has heard his rival hissed, an old coquette who has just received a compliment, a servant who is alone in a house, or a school-boy commencing his holidays? Paul de Kock. Extract from a Letter to Philip Sydney, at ten years of age, from his Father. BE E curteese of gesture, and affable to all men, with diversity of reverence, according to the dignity of the person. There is nothing which wynneth so much with so lytell cost. Use moderate dyet, so as after yowr meate, you may find yowr wytte fresher, and not duller, and yowr bodie more lyvely, and not more heavye. Delight to be cleanly, as well in all parts of yowr bodie, as in yowr garments. Give yowrselfe to be merrye, but let yowr myrthe be ever void of all scurrility, and biting woordes to any man, for an wounde given by a woorde is oftentimes harder to be cured, than that which is given by the sword. Above all things, tell no untruthe, no, not in trifels. Be virtuously occupied, so shall you make such an habits of well doing, that you shall not know how to do evell. Well, my lytell Phillipe, this is ynough for me, and too muche, I fear, for you. H. Sydney. WE E should gain our object better in the discipline of children, if, instead of finding fault with an action, we set ourselves to produce a better state of feeling, without noticing the action. Mary P. Ware. ONE THE BOY AT FIFTEEN. NE of the most common signs of this period, in some natures, is the love of contradiction and opposition—a blind desire to go contrary to everything that is commonly received among older people. The boy disparages the minister, quizzes the deacon, thinks the school-master an ass, and seems to be rather pleased, than otherwise, with the shock and flutter that all these announcements create among peaceably disposed grown people. Is he a boy; an immortal soul? a reasonable human being? or a goblin sent to torment? "What shall we do with him?" says his mother. "He can't be governed like a child, and he won't govern himself like a man." "We must cast out anchor and wait for day," says his father. Prayer is a long rope with a strong hold." H. B. Stowe. FOR OR what we learn in youth, to that alone Juvenal, |