life again by being dragged into the fresh air. you are inflicting upon yourselves the torments of famous Black Hole of Calcutta; and if there wer chimney in the room by which some fresh air enter, the candles would soon burn blue, as they you know, when-according to the storyboo ghosts appear; your brains would become distur and you yourselves would run the risk of beco ghosts, and the candles of actually going out.

6. Of this last fact there is no doubt; for if you a lighted candle into a close box, and, while you in breath from the outer air, send out breath throu tube into the box, however gently, you will in a time put the candle out.

7. Now, what is the difference between the b you take in and the breath you give out? The b which you take in is, or ought to be, pure air, posed, on the whole, of oxygen and nitrogen, w minute portion of carbonic-acid gas. The b which you give out is an impure air, to which been added, among other matters which will not port animal life, an excess of carbonic-acid gas.

8. That this is the fact, you can prove for yours by a simple experiment. Get a little limewater a druggist's, and breathe into it through a glass your breath will at once make the limewater m The carbonic-acid gas of your breath has laid ho the lime, and made it visible as white carbona lime-in plain English, as common chalk.

9. Now, I do not wish to load your memories with scientific terms; but I beseech you to remember at least these two-oxygen gas and carbonic-acid gas; and to remember that, as surely as oxygen feeds the fire of life, so surely does carbonic acid put it out.

10. I say "the fire of life." Why does our breath produce a similar effect upon animal life and the lighted candle? Every one of us is, as it were, a living fire. Were we not, how could we be always warmer than the air outside of us? There is a process going on perpetually in each of us, similar to that by which coal is burnt in the fire, oil in a lamp, and wax in a candle. To keep each of these fires alight, oxygen is needed; and the products of combustion, as they are called, are more or less the same in each case carbonic-acid gas and steam.

11. These facts justify the expression I just made use of: that the fire and the candles in the crowded room were breathing the same breath as you were. It is but too true. An average fire requires, to keep it burning, as much oxygen as several human beings do; each candle or lamp must have its share of oxygen likewise, and that a very considerable one; and an average gasburner consumes as much oxygen as several candles. All alike are making carbonic-acid gas.

12. The carbonic-acid gas of the fire happily escapes up the chimney in the smoke; but the carbonic-acid. gas from the human beings and the candles remains to poison the room, unless it be ventilated.

13. A human being shut up in a room, of which every crack is closed, with a pan of burning charcoal, falls asleep, never to wake again. His inward fire is competing with the fire of the charcoal for the oxygen of the room; both are making carbonic-acid gas out of it; but the charcoal, being the stronger of the two, gets all the oxygen to itself, and leaves the human being nothing to inhale but the carbonic-acid gas which it has made.

14. The human being dies first; but the charcoal dies also. When it has exhausted all the oxygen of the room, it cools, goes out, and is found in the morning half consumed beside its victim.

15. And now, what becomes of this breath which passes from your lips? Is it merely harmful? merely waste? No! The carbonic-acid gas which passes from your lips at every breath is a precious boon to thousands of things which we daily need. Indeed, there is a sort of hint at physical truth in the old fairy tale of the girl from whose lips, as she spoke, fell pearls and diamonds.

16. For, though you must not breathe your breath again, you may enjoy its fragrance and its color in the lily and the rose. When you walk in a sunlit garden, every word you speak, every breath you breathe, is feeding the plants and flowers around. The delicate surface of the green leaves absorbs the carbonic-acid gas, and parts it into its elements, retaining the carbon to make woody fiber, and courteously returning you

the oxygen to mingle with the fresh air, and be inhaled by your lungs once more.

17. Thus you feed the plants, and the plants feed you, while the great life-giving sun feeds both and the geranium standing in the sick child's window not merely rejoices his eye and mind by its beauty and freshness, but honestly repays the trouble spent on it; absorbing the breath which the child needs not, and giving to him the breath which he needs.

HEADS FOR COMPOSITION.

Write a composition by answering the following questions:1. Do we breathe two different breaths every time we breathe? 2. How may this be shown in the case of a sleeping child? How from the sensations we feel in a close, crowded room?

3. What is the difference between the breath we take in and that we give out?

4. What are the two principal gases in air?

5. What gas, of which there is a small portion in pure air, is found in excess in foul air?

6. Which "breath" do the fire and lights use up?

7. What gas, harmful to us, goes to feed plants?

"The Cruise of the Dolphin" is an extract from one of the best boys' books ever written "The Story of a Bad Boy," by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (born at Portsmouth, N.H., in 1836). Mr. Aldrich is known as a writer of sketches in a very crisp and clever style, and also takes high rank as a poet. Portsmouth (N.H.) is the point from which the four partners started on the cruise of the Dolphin."

(2) flood tide: the high tide about to fall or ebb. blanket over: cool the ardor of, throw cold water on.

· (5) throw a wet

PART I.

1. It was a proud moment when I stood on the wharf, with my three partners, inspecting the Dolphin, moored at the foot of a very slippery flight of steps. She was painted white, with a green stripe outside; and on the stern a yellow dolphin, with its scarlet mouth wide open, stared with a surprised expression at its own reflection in the water. The boat was a great bargain.

2. Not long after the purchase of the boat, we planned an excursion to Sandpeep Island, the last of the islands in the harbor. We proposed to start early in the morning, and return with the tide in the moon