Project Gutenberg's Harper's Young People, October 25, 1881, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Harper's Young People, October 25, 1881 An Illustrated Weekly Author: Various Release Date: August 17, 2015 [EBook #49719] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, OCT 25, 1881 *** Produced by Annie R. McGuire VIC WHITNEY'S REVENGE. TIM AND TIP. A FLOWERLESS FLOUR GARDEN. ANOTHER BEAR STORY. THE VIOLET AND THE SUNBEAM. A GAME OF CRICKET. A LITTLE ORPHAN. THE TALKING LEAVES. OUR ICE-CREAM. OUR POST-OFFICE BOX. HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE Vol. II.—No. 104. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. price four cents. Tuesday, October 25, 1881. Copyright, 1881, by Harper & Brothers. $1.50 per Year, in Advance. [Pg 817] VIC WHITNEY'S REVENGE. BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON. All the boys cried, "Shame!" Tom Reid, who was scarcely regarded as a boy now, so nearly grown was he, went up to Hen Little, and catching him by the shoulder and shaking him, said: "It seems to me you pick out your boy to bully. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, to hit a fellow under your size and not half your strength, and I've a notion to thrash you for it myself." Nobody heard what Hen Little replied, because all the boys were talking at once now; but somehow, when Vic Whitney rose from the ground, his clothes torn, his nose bleeding, and his books muddy, everybody saw that he was going to say something, and everybody listened. What he said was this: "Hen Little, I've borne with you for two years; I've taken all your meannesses as mere teasing, and I've thought you only a little rough; but now I tell you you're a coward and a bully, and I give you warning that I'll whip you for this day's work, if it's ten years hence." "Boys," said Tom Reid, "I move that, as students of this High School, we hereby exclude Hen Little from all our games and sports, and regard him as an outside barbarian, until he makes a proper apology to Vic Whitney for what he has done." "Second the motion!" cried a dozen voices, while all the girls clapped their hands. "Wait a minute, please," called Vic; "don't put that motion, Tom. Let me say a word. I thank you all for your sympathy, but I beg you not to do what you're doing. I've made this matter a quarrel now, and it's my quarrel, not yours. I've told Hen Little that I shall whip him for this, and I shall do it, you may depend. But that ought to settle it, so far as you are concerned. Hen is bigger than I am, and much stronger; but I shall thrash him in due time, and it ain't fair to punish him twice for one offense. If you punish him, I can't, without doing an injustice, and I don't want to do that. Please withdraw your motion, Tom." [Pg 818] "But this sort of thing is a disgrace to the school," said Tom. "Very well; but I am going to punish it myself," replied Vic, "and that will clear the school. I've a right to be the one to do it." "But you can't thrash Hen Little," cried half a dozen boys in a breath. "No, not now. But I shall be able to do it after a while. Trust me, and do me the favor I have asked. Withdraw your motion, and treat Hen as if nothing had happened, and I'll take care of the rest." There was something in Vic's manner which awed the boys into respectful obedience. They were outraged with Hen Little, and would have enjoyed "making the school too hot for him," but they obeyed Vic Whitney. When Vic had secured their promise to this effect, he gathered up his books and walked away toward his home. Little had teased him mercilessly during the whole of the two years since they both entered the High School, but Vic had borne it all as mere teasing, not to be resented. At the end of the last term, however, Vic had successfully offered himself for examination with the class in advance of his own, having worked of nights to get ahead, and in this way he had distanced his own class, and made himself a sort of hero in the school. At the same examination Hen Little had failed to pass with the class, and his mortification took the form of hatred of his former classmate, who had succeeded in making two steps forward while he failed to make one. His teasing became positive persecution, but Vic continued to endure it with a smiling face. One day, however, just after school, as Vic was starting toward home, with his books under his arm, he accidentally passed too near a gymnasium rope on which Hen Little was swinging. A slight collision was the result, and Hen lost his hold on the rope, with no more serious consequence than a fall to his knees. Springing up, he rushed at Vic, and without a word of warning, dealt him a severe blow on the nose, knocking him down into a little puddle. It was a particularly brutal and wanton attack, and so, as I began by saying, all the boys cried, "Shame!" and the scene already described ensued. Vic Whitney seemed calm enough when he begged the boys to refrain from their proposed measure of vengeance, but as he walked away homeward he was in reality very much disturbed. His sense of justice was outraged beyond endurance, and his feeling was that he would wrong himself if he failed to administer the punishment he had promised Hen Little. If Vic could have concealed the affair from his mother by saying nothing about it, he would have done so; but that was impossible. The torn clothing and the swollen nose required an explanation. When he had told the story, and declared his purpose, his mother sought gently to calm his spirit; but finding that impossible in his present mood, she quietly dropped the matter, hoping at some later time to dissuade Vic from his intention. After supper Vic went out without saying where he was going. He walked up the street, and entered the office of Dr. McCutcheon, his father's life-long friend. "Well, my boy," said the doctor, "what's the matter? Have you been hurt?" "No; it's nothing," said Vic; "and I didn't come for sticking-plasters or poultices. I want your advice." "You shall have it. What is the trouble?" "I want you to tell me just how I should live, while developing my muscles, in order that I may gain strength and activity as rapidly as possible." "What! going to make a prize-fighter of yourself? I thought you cared more for triumphs won with your head." "No, I'm not going to be a prize-fighter," replied Vic; "but I am going to get up all the muscle there is in me, and I want to know about diet, etc." "Well," said the doctor, "perhaps you are a trifle flabby for want of exercise, and I'm not sure that you can do better than train a little. As to diet, quit coffee and tea, eat plenty of roast beef and other wholesome plain food, let pastry alone, and don't study just before or just after a hearty meal; get ten hours' sleep in every twenty-four, if you can; and it won't take much training to make you robust." Clearly the doctor had no thought that Vic intended anything more than to make himself robust and healthy; but Vic had secured the information he wanted. The next day he fitted up a number of gymnastic appliances in the cow barn. He fastened ring ropes to the beams, and constructed some parallel bars; he swung a ladder horizontally, and hung a bag of sand on a level with his breast. Then his training began. When he got out of bed in the morning he took a cold bath, and rubbed himself well with a coarse towel. Then slipping on some light clothing, he went out and ran around two or three blocks at a good round pace. On his return, after taking breath, he swung by his hands on his ring ropes, drawing himself up first with both hands, and then, after a week's practice, with one hand at a time. The horizontal bars and the ladder came next, each furnishing a variety of exercises for different muscles. Finally, Vic would stand in front of his sand bag and strike it with his fists a great many times. At first these muscular exercises made him stiff and sore, but this effect soon passed away, and day by day he increased the amount of exercise taken. His muscles grew in size and hardened. Feats that had been impossible to him at first, became easy, and the exercise which at first seemed to exhaust him became positively delightful. Devising new exercises and new apparatus every week, he presently found that he was acquiring something besides strength—he was growing expert in all manner of agile feats. He practiced trapeze performances, and rapidly acquired an accuracy of eye, a steadiness of nerves, which made easy and safe many cat-like feats, in which, if he had attempted them a few weeks before, he must certainly have broken his neck. His mother had anxiously watched his conduct; and one evening she seized upon a favorable moment for remonstrance, seeking to dissuade him from his purpose of vengeance. He heard her silently, and when she had done, he replied, very calmly, but very resolutely: "Mother, what you say is all true and right in principle. It is wrong to cherish anger and to seek vengeance, but that isn't my case. I don't hate Hen Little: I pity his meanness and his cowardice. I am not seeking vengeance, but justice, and I have a right to that. If I were to give up thrashing him, I should look at myself with contempt. I shall punish him, not because I hate him—for I don't—but because I must assert my own manhood." The widow was perplexed by this view of the case. She could not quite believe it was right, and yet she could not conscientiously say it was wrong. "Well, my son," she replied, "I fear you are wrong; but you may be right. At any rate, I can not take the responsibility of urging you to submit to anything that you feel to be a degradation. Feeling as you do, you must decide the matter for yourself." "I have decided it," said Vic; "and the decision is that I must thrash Hen Little." Vic and his mother were sitting in the doorway during this conversation. Vic had finished his lessons, and the hour was late, but the night was so pleasant that the pair sat there chatting long after their usual bed-time. Just as Vic ended the discussion with the remark quoted above, the fire-bells rang out with that eager, noisy, frightened clangor which fire- bells have only in small cities where a fire calls the whole population forth. Vic seized his hat and ran, guided by the glare which already appeared at the opposite end of the town. The burning house was one of the largest in the little city, a building three stories in height; and before the excited volunteer fire companies could get a stream of water running, the fire was evidently beyond their control. It had broken out in the lower story, near the stairway; and finding that efforts to stay its course were idle, the firemen and spectators did little more than place ladders at a second-story window for the escape of the family, who had been sleeping. When all were out, there was nothing to do but to stand and watch the bonfire, as no other house was near enough to be in danger. Presently a head appeared at one of the windows of the third story, and a cry for help was heard. A shudder ran through the crowd, for there was no help to be given. The fire had burned both the stairways, and there was no ladder long enough to reach beyond the second story. Some of the spectators stood stupefied; others ran about aimlessly, trying to do something, but having no idea what. Meantime the boy at the window cried aloud and piteously for help. His father and mother were not less frantic than he. They had believed that all the family were safely out, supposing that Hen—for it was Hen Little—had passed down one flight from his third-story bedroom, and had escaped with the rest. Seeing him now at the window, they lost their wits, and cried to him to leap out, without thinking that to do so would be instant death to him. Yet there was apparently nothing to be done, and the situation was appalling. The crowd shuddered to think that the boy, whom they all knew, must be burned to death there in their sight. Presently a cry arose at the rear of the crowd, and Vic Whitney came running with all his might, shouting: "Don't jump, Hen! Stay where you are! Don't jump out!" Vic had run to a neighboring house, and brought away a clothes-line. "Has anybody a string?" he shouted—"a kite cord—anything—quick!" A boy handed him a kite cord, and Vic quickly tied one end of it around his own body. Then turning to Tom Reid, he said: "Unwind fifty feet or so, break it off, and tie the end to this rope, so that I can pull the rope up. Be quick." Leaving Tom to execute this direction, Vic ran forward, stepped upon the railing of the front steps, and grasping a window-shutter which luckily was open, and therefore not in the blaze that licked its tongue out of the window, he drew himself lightly up to its top, crying out as he did so, "Play a stream of water on me." The fireman obeyed, and none too soon, for all the clothing on Vic's right side was scorching. From the top of this shutter Vic reached the window-sill above, and disappeared in a dense cloud of black smoke. It was for only a moment, however. Having his wits about him, he held his breath to avoid suffocation, and quickly climbed to the top of the window, and into the air again. Another moment, and he had grasped the sill of the third-story window. A gust of wind blew a flame from below right upon him. He felt his arms blister and his head swim. One second more, and he must loosen his hold, and fall. The crowd below uttered a moan of horror. The wind shifted instantly, however, and in spite of the agony he suffered from the burns, Vic made a last effort, and drew himself up to the window where Hen had stood. Hen was no longer there, and the room was too full of smoke for Vic to see into it. He knew what had happened. Hen had become unconscious from suffocation, and had fallen on the floor by the window. Hastily drawing up the kite cord, to which Tom Reid had fastened the end of the clothes-line, Vic soon had the rope in his hand. [Pg 819] Reaching down from the window-sill, he fastened the line around Hen's body, and swung him out, the crowd below yelling itself hoarse as he lowered away. A few seconds sufficed to let Hen down to the ground, where the doctors took charge of him. Meantime Vic had to think of saving himself. He fastened the rope at the window, and was on the point of slipping down it, when a fierce flame burst from the window immediately beneath, burning the rope off like a thread, and cutting off all chance of escape in that direction. Vic saw his extreme danger, but as he afterward said, his mind seemed to be unnaturally calm and alert. There was fire below him, through which it was impossible to pass, and the roof was in a blaze. But he remembered that the lightning- rod of this house, instead of passing straight to the earth, was carried down along the roof to the corner nearest him, and thence down the corner to the ground. Seizing this slender chance of life, he climbed to the top of the window, and grasped the stout gutter pipe that ran along the eaves. Swinging from this by his hands, he worked his way slowly and painfully toward the corner, while the people below actually held their breath. Whether the gutter would hold the boy's weight or not was terribly uncertain, and the people stood on tiptoe, as if they could thereby lessen the weight, and increase his small chance for life. Slowly he worked along toward the corner, and at last his hand grasped the friendly lightning-rod. A few seconds later he was safely on the ground, but so badly burned that it was necessary to carry him home on a shutter. A week later, when Dr. McCutcheon pronounced Vic out of danger, a company of his school-mates came to see him. They filed into his room, and took their places in a sort of line. Then Hen Little entered, and walking up to the bedside, he said: "I've had my thrashing, Vic, and I've brought all the boys that were present on that other day to hear me say so. I want to ask your pardon for all I've done to you. I deserved punishment; now I've got it; and if it ain't enough, you may thrash me with your fists as soon as you get well, and I won't raise a finger." Then, turning to the boys, he said: "Vic called me a coward that day when I abused him, and he was right. I acted cowardly, and I want to say so to all of you. I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself." Vic held out his hand, which was bandaged almost to the finger-tips, and said: "Hen, I take it all back. There isn't a cowardly bone in the body of a boy who can apologize in that way for a fault. Let's be friends hereafter." TIM AND TIP;[1] OR, THE ADVENTURES OF A BOY AND A DOG. BY JAMES OTIS, AUTHOR OF "TOBY TYLER," ETC. Chapter XIII. IN CONCLUSION. Every one knew that Tip's life depended on their getting home quickly, and all the strength they could command was expended on the oars to such purpose that in a trifle more than two hours the boat was moored alongside Dunham's wharf again. Without stopping for anything, the entire party followed Tim and Bill to Dr. Abbott's office, and there they could hardly prevent themselves from cheering when the doctor told them that Tip's injuries were by no means serious, and that he would soon be well, although it was possible that he might always be lame in one hind-leg. The shot were soon extracted, and Tip taken to the most comfortable spot in Mr. Tucker's barn, where it is safe to say he did not suffer from want of attention. That night, after Bobby and Tim had told the story of their camping out, Mr. Tucker thoroughly frightened them by saying that on the next day he was going to take Tim back to Selman to see Captain Babbige. Tim's face grew very pale, and it was plain to be seen that he was in the greatest terror, while Bobby was thrown into a perfect fever of excitement. "I am not going to leave you there, Tim, if I can help it, for I intend to do by you as I would some one should do by my Bobby if I had been called to meet the Great Father. As matters now stand, you have no right to be here, nor I to keep you; for Captain Babbige is your lawful guardian, whom I hope you did not leave without sufficient cause. To-morrow night we will start for Selman, and there the law shall decide whether you may not be permitted to choose another [Pg 820] TIP AND THE DOCTOR. guardian." Bobby caught eagerly at the idea that Tim would soon return, with a perfect right to stay on Minchin's Island, but the homeless boy took a more gloomy view of the case. He felt certain that Captain Babbige would force him to remain with him, and the future now looked as dark as a day or two before it had looked bright. So positive did he feel that he should not be allowed to return, that, if Tip's wound had been any less severe he would have taken him with him; but as it was, he made Bobby promise faithfully to send him as soon as he should be able to travel. The next day, when the boy population of Minchin's Island learned that Tim was to be taken back to the man who had abused him so cruelly, they held a sort of indignation meeting back of Mr. Tucker's barn, where the matter was discussed. Some of the more excitable among them proposed that, since the steamer on which Tim was to leave would not touch at the island until nearly six o'clock, there was plenty of time for him to run away again, making it impossible for Mr. Tucker to carry him back. They argued that he could build himself a hut in the woods, where, protected by Tip, he could live the jolliest kind of a life, and they all could come to see him as summer boarders. But Tim rejected all such counsel, giving good reason for doing so. "Mr. Tucker says I ought not have run away in the first place, an' I s'pose he knows, though it does seem hard to have to stay where folks are so awful ugly to you. Now he says I must go back, an' I wouldn't be any kind of a feller if I run away from him after he's been so good to me. I'd like to go out in the woods to live if it wouldn't rain any, and I'd do anything rather than go back to Selman; but Mr. Tucker says I ought to go, an' I'm goin', whatever Captain Babbige does to me." Every boy present knew that Tim was right, and those who had first advised him felt ashamed of having done so, while all united in cheering him for his resolution, until Tip, awakened by the noise, barked loudly, which, to Tim's mind at least, was proof that he approved of his master's decision. That night Tim was escorted to the steamer by a large number of boys, and while he was on the wharf he felt reasonably brave, even though he was obliged to pass directly in front of Captain Pratt. But when the steamer left the dock, and the cheers of the boys died away in the distance, he fully expected to be summoned to the wheel-house. But Captain Pratt paid no attention to him, and on the following day Selman was reached without any incident worthy of mention. There Tim was never exactly certain how the matter was arranged. He knew that he was taken into court almost as if he had been a criminal, that many questions were asked him by the Judge, and that a number of gentlemen whom he knew told of the ill-treatment he had received from Captain Babbige. Then it seemed as if Mr. Tucker had been accused of something, for he told about his business and himself, and showed a great number of letters from people on Minchin's Island, all speaking of him as a kind and good man. Captain Babbige was there, apparently in a very uncomfortable frame of mind, and he spoke to Tim in the kindest manner possible, asking him if he hadn't always treated him as a son. Tim was not sure how fathers did treat sons, except in one or two cases; but he told the Captain of what he had said about wanting him to die, and then coaxed the Judge—oh, so hard!—to let him go back with Mr. Tucker. Then some other people had a good deal to say, the Judge talked some more, and after they were all through, Mr. Tucker told Tim it had been decided he could go back to Minchin's Island. Tim's delight was so great that it seemed impossible for him to keep his feet on the ground. And when he was back at the island again, in the midst of the crowd of boys who had come to welcome him for the second time, his joy found vent in words. And when Tim got into Mr. Tucker's house, where Bobby cheered until he was hoarse, and Mrs. Tucker kissed him again and again, he found it impossible even to speak, because of a great lump in his throat, which was not caused by sorrow; but he said over and over to himself that no one should regret in the man what they had done for the homeless orphan boy. THE END. [Pg 821] Fig. 1—Toad-stools. Fig. 2.—Yeast Plant. a, Single cells; b, growing plants. A FLOWERLESS FLOUR GARDEN. BY MRS. SOPHIE B. HERRICK. We all know, in a general way, that nothing grows unless it is alive, and yet who ever thinks of bread dough as having life in it? There never was a garden bed so full of living plants as is the loaf when it is moulded into shape, and ready to be put into the oven. If you have never watched the mixing of bread, I would advise you to go and look at it the first chance you have, for it is a very curious and entertaining bit of gardening. The cook first prepares her seed, which is the yeast. There are several ways of planting yeast, as there are of planting other seed. You may either soak it to make the seed sprout quickly, or you may start the little plants in a hot-bed, or, again, you may buy your young seedlings, and transplant them into your own garden plot. Just so you may get your yeast seed ready to plant. The yeast cake may be only melted in warm water, or it may be set to start in a cup of water and flour by the warm kitchen fire, or you may buy the yeast already grown at the baker's. When the seed or seedlings are ready, the garden plot is prepared. The cook heaps up in her bread bowl quarts of snowy flour. Into this heap, after making a hole, she pours her prepared yeast. Working the bread is only another name for the careful scattering of the seed through all the dough, that it may spring up and grow, and fill the whole mass with the tiny plants. The yeast plant is not a common kind of plant, but belongs to the same class as mushrooms and toad-stools, and the fuzzy, cottony growth that we call mould. There are two kinds of plants that we may find almost anywhere in the fields and woods, and even in the city yards—the fungi and the green plants. The yeast plant is one of the fungi. These are very different in most respects from the green plants: they can live and grow and thrive in darkness; they do not have either leaves or flowers, and they usually spring up and die very quickly. The greatest real difference between the two kinds is, however, that the fungi live on food that has been alive before—on plants, or animals, or decaying matter, while the green plants live on what they get out of the earth and the air and the water. The simplest of all the fungi is the yeast plant. It begins its life as a tiny egg-shaped bag, or sac (Fig. 2 a). This cell, as it is called, is filled with a very curious jelly, perhaps the most wonderful thing in all the world. It is found in everything that lives and grows. By its help the little yeast plant can take the flour and water, and can change it so that while the paste is used up and disappears, the cells grow larger, and sprout out buds. You have particles of this jelly, or protoplasm, lining your mouth and stomach, and the food you eat is changed into flesh and blood and bones by this wonder- working magician. In the figures, the grainy substance is the protoplasm. This jelly all seems to be pretty much alike, but there is some marvellous difference somewhere—a difference that science has never reached. The yeast cell takes in certain food, and grows, but it never makes anything but other or larger yeast cells. The food you eat and digest makes just you; more of you, perhaps, but still you, yourself, and nobody else. Like all living things, the tiny yeast cell must eat and breathe, or it will die. It feeds, not by opening its mouth and taking in its food, but by lying bathed in it, and soaking it up through its skin. When the cook dissolves her yeast cake, and puts it into the spongy dough, she is putting the little plant into its food bath. The cells which have been so long in prison, shut up in the darkness and cold of the dried yeast, begin to look alive, and stretch themselves, and enjoy their liberty. They take kindly to their food right away, and begin helping themselves to what they find about them. They do not merely soak up the flour and water in which they are plunged, but they manage to extract from the compound just what they need. The cells must not only feed in order to live, but they must breathe, they must somehow get oxygen, which is the gas that our breathing takes out of the air. And this they extract, as a miner does gold, by separating it from its ore. There is a certain amount of sugar in wheat, which gives to good bread and to cracked wheat their delicate sweetness of flavor. [Pg 822] Fig. 3.—Mould. Fig. 4.—Mould. a, Rosette Heads; b, Fruit. Sugar is made up of a number of different substances, which the yeast cell has the power of separating. It takes the oxygen for its own use, and leaves behind the other things that make up the sugar. Feeding and breathing in this way, by taking what it needs from the flour, the cell grows. When it has reached its mature size, it rests quietly for a while as if it were gathering strength for the effort, and then it sends out a little bud, which grows like the parent cell, until another bud and another grow from it. When the plant is grown, it is very unlike our notion of a plant; it is really nothing more than a little chain of sacs growing end to end. As soon as the little plant has exhausted all the sugar and food substance of the flour, it stops growing, the cells separate, and remain quite still. There is just one time in the growth of the plant when the dough is right for baking. Before it has grown enough, the bubbles through the dough are too few or too small. These bubbles are the carbonic acid gas left behind when the oxygen has been taken out of the sugar, and there must be plenty of them to make the bread light. If the bread is left too long to rise, the cells get more than their share of the wheat sugar, and the bread is sour. Just at the right stage, which every good bread-maker can tell by experience, a thorough baking will destroy the alcohol, and the bread will be both sweet and light. When the yeast plant is sowed on the top of the flour and water, instead of being buried in it, all this is very different. The plant takes its food from the paste, but it does not need the sugar, so it lets that alone. It can get its oxygen in a much simpler way, right from the air, as we do, and does not need to go through the labor of smelting it out of the sugar. The raising of our bread by yeast is entirely due to the efforts of the tiny cells to get a breath of air when we have smothered them up in the dough. There are other plants besides the yeast plant that act in the same way. Have you never heard your mother say, when she opened a jar of preserves, "These are all right, I know, for they are covered with mould"? Mould is a good deal like yeast in some things; if the germ cell, or spore, falls upon the top of the sweetmeats, it can get plenty of oxygen from the air, and so lets the sugar alone. But if it is nearly drowned in the syrup, it will get its oxygen somehow, and so the sugar has to be sacrificed, and the preserves are left to spoil. What else could you expect of such little mischief-makers if you shut them up with the sweetmeats? The yeast plant is so very, very small that you can not see it except with a very fine magnifying glass. But there are other plants like it which are large enough to be seen with a small and not a costly microscope.[2] These are what we call moulds. If you want to study moulds, nothing is easier than to prepare them. Mix a spoonful of flour with cold water, and spread the paste over the bottom of a plate or saucer. In a few days it will be covered all over. If you put it in a damp and dark place, the mould will sprout sooner. You might put away a piece of bread at the same time, and you will find it covered with a growth too. Take a bit of this paste on the blade of a knife, and examine it carefully. You will see among the cottony fibres a number of little upright stems with black or white or yellow heads, which give the mould a speckled look. Under the microscope you see a perfect jungle of growth—a tangle of threads, which look like spun glass, running here and there and everywhere. From these, which are the roots of the mould, the stems spring up, bearing, instead of leaves or flowers, tiny glistening toad-stools that look as if they were made out of a pearl; or sometimes the heads are like strings of little pearls (Fig. 3), or at others they are rosettes of such strings (Fig. 4 a). The black and sage green colors come later, and are the fruit or seed-bearing portion of the plant (Fig. 4 b). On my saucer of paste I found in one place a plantation of delicate yellow fungi. The stems came up thick, with the little round fruit at the end of each, looking as if the whole thing was carved out of amber. In another place, over the yawning caverns made by the cracks in the paste, there were delicate forms like grasses in seed, all looking like spun glass. The largest kind of common mould, which you may see in Fig. 5, is not so beautiful as these I have just described, but it shows very well the way the fungi grow, and form their seed, and then sow themselves. This plant is easily seen without any microscope, but looked at through the little Excelsior glass, you see a great deal more. The stalks look as they do in Fig. 5 a. If you are so fortunate as to have a large microscope, and watch them from day to day, you will see them look Fig. 5.—Mould. a, Stalk; b, same opened; c, outer skin broken, and spores scattering. as they do in Fig. 5 b, and finally, when the outer skin breaks, like c, in the same illustration. A single spoonful of flour will give you this wonderful garden, with its crop of yeast plant, if you sow the seed, or, if you trust to luck, its harvest of chance-sown mould. The air is full of these spores of the mould plants, and wherever they find a place they will take possession of it, and grow up without planting or cultivating, as weeds do. You can be certain of your yeast crop, because you have sowed it; but you must take your chances with the mould. You are almost sure, however, to find in any saucer of paste the different kinds described and pictured in Figs. 3, 4, and 5. It is worth while sometimes to get away from the every-day world, and learn the wonders that are to be found in the fairy ring to which the microscope admits us. ANOTHER BEAR STORY. BY ORVILLE DEANE. Mr D——, one of our neighbors, was going after his cows one night, and had a singular bit of experience. He kept the cattle near a meadow, and in going for them had to pass through a clump of bushes where raspberries and blackberries were abundant. The path was very narrow, and in some places so much overgrown by the bushes that a person might be very near an object and not see it. Suddenly a large bear rose up before him, and sat on his haunches not three feet away. Mr. D—— was a tall and very powerful man, and not easily frightened, but he didn't like such familiarity as that. There was no time to retreat, and he had no weapon with which to defend himself, but he clinched his huge fist, and struck the bear a terrific blow between the eyes. Bruin was not prepared for this, and as he sat up so straight, and could not brace himself quick enough, the blow knocked him clean over upon his back in the bushes. He roared, and scrambled to his feet, and ran off as fast as his legs could carry him, much more disturbed by the event than Mr. D—— was. A year or two after this, my father and I were out gathering raspberries one afternoon in August. We were in a field close by a wood, where several acres were covered with the bushes, and as it was newly cleared land, they grew very tall. Indeed, a person might be picking berries ten feet distant from you, and, if he kept quiet, you would not know it. After a while we climbed upon the trunk of a fallen tree, for the sake of reaching some high bushes that were bending under the weight of luscious fruit, when we saw a bear, not more than ten feet distant, helping himself to the same berries. At first he did not see us, and we watched him for a little as he ate the fruit. It was surprising how skillfully he would take a bush in his paws and hold it down while he ate off the berries, and then let it go and catch another. But we wanted those raspberries, and father shouted and swung his pail around his head, thinking to drive the bear away. But the beast did not propose to be disturbed in that way, and seemed to think he had as much right there as we. He simply let go the bushes, and looked at us. Father grew impatient with swinging the pail of berries around his own head, and threw it with all his might at the head of the bear. It was well aimed, for it struck him squarely in the face. It scattered the berries all over him, and the tin pail fell rattling among the bushes and stones. I never saw such a picture of astonishment as that bear presented. For a brief instant he seemed paralyzed, and then, dropping on four feet, he ran away screaming like a child who has been frightened by a turkey-gobbler. Father's berries were spilled, but he could do nothing else for some minutes but laugh at the way that poor bear ran and screamed. We hear stories about bears attacking people without provocation, but I believe most of them are purely imaginary or greatly exaggerated. I have hunted the black bear in the New England States, and in the British Provinces; I have threaded the forests on foot, and scoured the plains on horseback, but I never yet saw a black bear that would attack a man, unless it were a dam whose cubs were meddled with, or a bear that had been wounded and driven into a corner. Under such circumstances any animal will fight in self-defense. The chief difficulty with black bears is, not that they will hurt you, but that you can not get near enough to hurt them. THE VIOLET AND THE SUNBEAM. BY A. L. A. SMITH. [Pg 823] A bright little sunbeam sped earthward one day From his father's great bosom of light; For he heard from his beautiful home in the sky A poor little violet mournfully sigh, "The earth is so cold, and the winds are so high, I am sure I shall perish ere night." But the words barely passed from her trembling lips When a life-giving kiss on her fell; And the dear little sunbeam both arms round her threw, And said, "Tremble not, I shall tarry with you," And he kissed back her life, till the tenderest blue Proclaimed her the queen of the dell. A GAME OF CRICKET. What the game of base-ball is to this country—yes, and a great deal more—cricket is to England. It is the national game, the most favored among a people who are devoted to all kinds of out-door games and sports. Why, then, it may be asked, is it not more generally played in this country? The answer that has been given to several similar questions may, perhaps, be given to this. We have too many railroads to build and too many rivers to bridge to devote two whole days to a single game of cricket. Ay, my masters, build your railroads from ocean to ocean and from the great lakes to the Gulf, bridge your mighty cañons and your roaring torrents, but remember that the brain that works out the problems of the engineer and the surveyor will work the smoother and last the longer if it be greased occasionally with an excellent oil compounded of rest and recreation. It is very possible that most of our readers have never even seen a game of cricket, especially if they live far from large cities. To the Philadelphia boy cricket is as familiar as is base-ball to most boys. If asked to name the "three Graces," he might answer, as pat as you please, "E. M., W. G., and G. F.," giving the initials of the three famous brothers Grace, whose names are familiar wherever cricket is played. But as this paper is not for boys of any one place, but for boys all over the country—nay, for boys wherever found—we will describe the game, and try to show in what lies its great favor among those who know it. Cricket is properly played by eleven persons on each side, though where so many persons can not be brought together, a less number can play. One side bats, and the other side bowls and fields. Two batsmen go to the wickets, one at each end; and the first bowler delivers a ball to the batsman opposite to him, while the fielders take their positions at a greater or less distance from the wicket. "Oh, well hit! well hit!" Yes, well hit, indeed. The batsman has driven the ball right over the bowler's head, and has already crossed between the wickets twice, scoring two "runs." Yes, and he and his partner are trying another one. Good! three runs off the first ball. But another batsman is to receive the ball this time. It is the one who was at the wicket whence the last ball was bowled. As they have made three runs, the man who hit the last ball is at the other end now. Ah, that was a good ball, and well he played it. There was no driving that ball to "long on" or "long off" for three. It was well pitched up, and had a spin on it that made it shoot along the ground instead of rising; and so the batsman played back, and just got his bat down in time to stop it, for it was bound for his middle stump. He is a cautious player, the man at this end, and the bowling is straight and well pitched. After five balls, a man who has been standing by the bowler with his coat on, and seeming to take no interest in the game, turns his back on the bowler and batsman, and strolls off as if tired of looking on. Then the fielders seem to be playing at "pussy wants a corner," for they walk about and change places, and then another man begins to bowl from the other wicket. The fact is, you did not hear the man with his coat on call, "Over!" Well, he did so. Not that the game is over, or the innings, or anything else. They are simply going to bowl from the other end, and so all the fielders have to change their positions so as to occupy the same position with regard to the batsman. The man with the coat on is one of the umpires (there is one at each wicket), and it is part of his business to count the balls bowled. When one man has bowled four or five balls, as the case may be, another man bowls the same number from the other wicket. "Well bowled! oh, good ball!" The meaning of these cries arising from the spectators is that the new bowler has sent the middle stump of one of the batsmen flying, and our friend retires to the tent, where he is greeted with some little applause by his comrade. And so [Pg 824] one man out of the eleven is "out." The next man walks up and takes his place, and the game goes on. He is a careful player, this new man, but he is a hard hitter also. See how he swung his bat round to his left side, and sent that last ball to "leg" for four runs. Now he has the ball again, and for "over" after "over" he and his partner give the fielders plenty to do. Look at the board on which the score is displayed. It marks sixty runs, and only one man out. This is getting serious. The Captain of the fielders calls one of his men up to him, and says a few words. Some new tactics are to be tried. The next "over" reveals what they are. The batsmen have become used to the bowling, and so, like a wise man, the Captain puts on a fresh bowler. The new man's balls seem easy enough. See, there one goes for three or four runs at least. But wait a little. This underhand bowling is tempting, but it is also dangerous. A beautiful easy ball comes which the batsman steps to meet, and drives high over the heads of the near fielders, but away off there in the distance a man is posted to look after just such balls as this. He sees it coming, keeps his eye on it, runs backward a few paces, and it is in his hand before it touches the ground. And so the second man is caught out. By the time the third man is out, the score has reached a hundred, but after that the wickets fall more quickly. The bowling is changed as often as it is found that the batsmen can master it, and the fielders are on the alert. There is but one more wicket to fall, and the score bids fair to reach two hundred. One hundred would have seemed a good score, had they not already nearly doubled that number, and now they are straining every nerve to gain the wished-for two hundred. A GAME OF CRICKET—"RUN OUT." They are stealing runs now; that is, they are running where there is great risk of the ball being thrown up to the wicket before they can reach it; and if the ball strikes the wicket before the batsman reaches it, he is "run out." Stealing runs is a risky game, and— Yes; well, there is a proof of it. Yonder long-legged fellow has slipped and fallen, and though he stretches out his bat as far as possible, he can not reach his "ground"; he is "run out," and the innings is over for one hundred and ninety-nine runs. The fielders retire to the shade of the tent, and two of them soon come forth to take their places with the bat, while the remainder enjoy their well-earned rest. Those who have had their innings take up their positions in the field, and the first innings of the other side begins. Then the excitement is renewed. Shouts of applause or encouragement greet every good or unlucky deed of the players, and as the innings draws to a close, the interest increases. It takes two innings on each side to decide the match, and a game is never lost until it is won. Of course in cricket there is good luck and bad, but in this game, as in all others where skill plays the principal part, luck counts for but little in the long-run. The best players nearly always win. Cricket may be played six months in the year, and those who play it think six months none too much. It is a social game also, and a good club can always arrange matches with neighboring clubs, and so friendly is the feeling among players that a visiting eleven nearly always declare, when they go home after a match, that they were never better treated in their lives. In the skill required, the variety of excitement, and the friendly feeling that it promotes, lie the claims of cricket to the favor it enjoys. [Pg 825] THE LITTLE ORPHAN. A LITTLE ORPHAN. This poor little lamb has lost its mother, and it looks cold and famished. It is well that it has found friends who will take good care of it, for without food and shelter it would soon perish. When it has drunk the warm milk which Guy's mamma is coaxing it to take, she will make a little bed for it of some nice soft hay or wool, cover it up, and leave it in a snug, quiet place to take a nap. Sheep and lambs love mountain and hill countries, and their pastures are almost always on breezy uplands. The first sheep ever brought to this continent were sent to Virginia from England in 1609. How bewildered and unhappy the poor things must have felt on the long voyage, with the great waves thumping against the vessel, and the wind whistling through the sails! They must have been very glad indeed when at last they touched land. There is one English poet whose verses about lambs ought to be learned by all children. We mean Wordsworth. You remember that in a recent number of Young People we had a poem of his which was beautifully illustrated. One of his poems is called "The Pet Lamb," and it is about a little orphan lamb just like this one, which is cared for by a child named Barbara. The lamb is bleating, and straining at its cord, and she says to it: "'Rest, little young one, rest; thou hast forgot the day When my father found thee first in places far away. Many flocks were on the hills, but thou wert owned by none, And thy mother from thy side for evermore was gone. "'Thy limbs will shortly be twice as stout as they are now; Then I'll yoke thee to my cart, like a pony in the plough; My playmate thou shalt be, and when the wind is cold Our hearth shall be thy bed, our house shall be thy fold.'" There is another poem by Wordsworth called "The Last of the Flock," which is quite different from this. It is the story of a poor peasant on the hills who had a flock of sheep which he dearly loved. He could not bear to kill or to sell them. A time of great distress came, and there was a scarcity of food. He went to the parish authorities, and asked for relief for his family. This they denied, saying to him: "You are not a poor man. You have sheep and lambs. Dispose of them." So one by one he sold them, and it almost broke his heart to do it, and at last he had only one lamb left. He loved his children, and did not wish them to suffer, but to part with his cherished flock was like giving his blood up drop by drop, and finally, as he walked on the highway, taking the last lamb to the market, the tears ran down his face. He said, "'And of my fifty, yesterday I had but only one, And here it lies upon my arm, Alas! and I have none. To-day I fetched it from the rock; It is the last of all my flock.'" Most sensible people will think that the man ought to have been glad that he possessed sheep, which he could exchange [Pg 826] Drop Cap A for bread for his boys and girls; but here and there among the children there will be some who can understand his feeling. You would not like to part for money with a dog, a cat, or a bird which you had taken care of, even if you wanted money very much, and to the peasant the sheep and lambs had become almost as dear as his children. When he sold one, he felt almost as if he had been selling a child. As all shepherds do, he knew each sheep from every other, and their faces did not look alike, as the faces in a flock do to us, but each had an expression of its own—what we call individuality. When the lamb in the picture shall have grown too large to take his food out of a bottle, he will crop the sweet fresh grass, and frisk about merrily, especially if his mistress now and then tempts him with a taste of salt in her hand. He will be very gentle, though full of play, and he and his baby master will have fine times together. It is rather sad to think that as time passes he will be less fond of gambolling, and will become a stupid, grazing, dreaming old sheep, not nearly so interesting as now when he is a little shivering orphan lamb. THE TALKING LEAVES.[3] An Indian Story. BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD. Chapter IV. mountain range is not at all like a garden fence. You do not just climb up one side of it, and drop down into another garden beyond. The one which arose before the Lipans that day, and through which the Apaches before them had driven their long lines of ponies, loaded with buffalo meat and all the baggage of an Indian hunting camp, was really a wide strip of very rough country, full of mountains, and rising to a high ridge in the centre. The Lipans were not very well acquainted with it, except by what they had heard from others, and there had been some murmuring among them at first when their leader announced his intention of following his war-path to th...