VOL. XI.

EASTER.

BY ANNIE M. LIBBY.

O Saviour, who for us didst faint and bleed,
For sinners, suffering in their hour of need,
While we remember Thou for us hast died,
Upon the cross wast foully crucified,-
To-day around the world the glad news goes,
'Tis Easter morn! This day our Lord arose!

Ring out, O bells, your happiest chime
To usher in this blessed Easter time;

O fair, white lilies tell with sweetest breath,
This day the Christ has triumphed over death,
And echoing round the world the glad news goes,
Rejoice, O earth, to-day thy Lord arose!

DAFFYDOWNDILLY.

BY ANNIE M. LIBBY.

The hoarse wind cried loud in the dark fir wood,
The fields looked sere and dead,
But daffodil lighted her golden lamp,-
"Spring's almost here," she said.

The sleepy pansies saw the yellow gleam
Shine down the garden aisle,

And hastened to open their velvet eyes,

To catch the spring's first smile.

And the crimson peonies came up red,

Blushing that they were late;

And the buds pushed out on the lilac tree,
Down by the orchard gate.

And the grass grew green, and the little creek

Sang forth so clear and strong,

The violet sisters came trooping out,

A purple-hooded throng.

And robin and sparrow began to build,
And daffy's lamp went out;

66 For there's no use burning it now," she said, "Since all have got about."

But they quite forgot they were loth to start,
"And I was first,"-" No, I,"

The birds and flowers quarrelling said,
But in a field hard by,

A dancing daisy for a moment stopped,
And shook her pretty head,-

"If 'twas not for daffodil's golden lamp,
Where would you be?" she said.
So maid of honor is daffy to spring,
And famed in song and rhyme,
For she set her golden lamp aflame
As soon as it was time.

No. 8.

IP was a troublesome scholar. He was dirty and brown and ragged. He had probably never been perfectly quiet for five consecutive minutes in his life and his teacher had no end of trials with him.

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She sent him up one day, I remember, to me. came shambling into the office in a shame-faced way,for, in spite of his many offences, he had never been up to the master's office before. His offence was a confirmed habit of stealing flowers. He stole them from the other children, from the teachers, through the palings of the neighboring fences, even from the blooming pots in the schoolroom windows.

It was in vain that his teacher had talked with him, had punished him, had bribed him. The boy uttered no word in self-defence or explanation, but yielded to temptation at every opportunity.

I talked kindly to Kip, and although his face kept its usual stolid reserve, I noticed that his brown, wizened hands moved uneasily in his ragged pockets.

"Why do you persist in doing so?" I asked, finally, in persuasive tones.

Kip looked me straight in the eye a moment.

"I does it for Mag, sir," he said, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. "I have to."

"And who is Mag?" said I.

"She's my little sister," he went on in a low voice. "She's lame. We're poor, and Mag cries an' cries an' cries when I don't bring her no flowers. An' when I do, sir, she takes 'em in her thin white hands, an' kisses 'em an' holds 'em up close to her, like a baby, sir, an' then she goes to sleep an' forgits the pain. An' I'd rather take a dozen whippins', sir," he added. straightening his small body and looking me fearlessly in the face, “than see Mag cry 'cause I don't bring 'em."

I meant to go and see Mag and find out what could be done for her lameness. But the school-year came to an end, and though I never, thank God, forgot her flowers, I had never seen her when I started away on my summer vacation. I was gone a month, and after my return some days elapsed before I heard from Kip. They had moved from one shabby tenement house into another; and I was disinclined, in those hot days, to hunt them up.

One morning, however, the door-bell was rung violently. I answered it myself, and saw one of Kip's mates standing on the door-steps.

Kip's hurt. He wants to see the master."

I took the address of troublesome Kip, and the boy went away. I was very busy that morning, finishing an important paper on "Education for the Poor," and I waited until I had finished it and could post it on my way to see Kip,-troublesome boy!

It was ten o'clock when I reached the tenement-house, and climbed to the topmost floor. There I found him. It was too late.

There was nothing left but a slight waxen figure on the miserable bed, with brown, but at last, clean hands, folded under the sheet. He had died an hour before, saying,

"O, I wish I could see the master!"

"It was all for me," said poor deformed Mag, sitting white and helpless in a rude though comfortable chair. "I've been so selfish about the flowers. He was down to the market last night and saw a rose lying out on the street. He wanted to get it for me, sir. He ran out there, and then a big, heavy team came up, and Kip was found hurt. There is the rose, sir," and she pointed to a miserable, faded, withered flower in a broken teacup.

But to Mag the flower was more precious than the costliest hot-house rose could have been.

A month after, Mag died. Her fragile, half-starved frame gave way, at Kip's death, to the disease that had robbed her of her childhood.

Together, she and Kip have plenty of flowers now, and I think, I feel sure, that Kip-troublesome as he washas seen the Master.

SCIENTIFIC COLLECTIONS: HOW MADE.

BY JULIA M'NAIR WRIGHT.

BEGIN in a humble way. Interest the children; have a shelf as long and broad as possible, cover it neatly with brown paper, utilize pasteboard boxes with divisions made of pasteboard, cover them with such stray panes of window-glass as can be secured; beguile some generous grocer into the gift of a glass-lidded raisin or honey-box or two, then set the children at work to fill these improvised cases. Teach them the humanities of

taken, and that only one egg shall be carried off from the nest full. Help the busy hands to make butterfly nets, and beetle-boxes; teach the quick and painless method of killing the specimen. As the collection grows richer weed out the poorer objects. Begin, begin, begin! Despise not the day of small things.

Soon the indifferent will be saying, "Why this is really very nice!" "Wonderful how the children are interested." "Astonishing how observing the youngsters are." "Curious how much they know about what I never thought of!" And the one shelf will grow to two or more; some good grandmother will present to the school her glass-front cupboard, or, the best trustee will take up a little subscription to buy glass cases. Such an enterprise is bound to grow if it is started enthusiastically and continued systematically.

II. In a small reader for children, I had illustrated an observation, by reference to some object of daily occurrence on the seashore.

"Well!" said a Western teacher to me, "that would be intelligible to a prairie boy or girl." No doubt the remark was just, and yet why should the prairie boy or girl be expected to be ignorant of the wonders of the shore? And why should the Cape Cod boy or girl be expected to be ignorant of grasses and flowers that are the growth of the prairies?

Is there a western school where neither teacher nor pupil, neither parent nor friend of either, has a correspondent or acquaintance at the seashore who could mail a box of those simplest treasures of the beach,—shells, dried crabs, sea-weeds, bits of coral and sponge?

Why cannot our schools, through the columns of the educational journals, institute a system of exchanges, like that now carried on in a number of magazines and papers, where A offers to give B seeds for roots, patterns for music, or books for scraps for crazy work? What has been efficient in one case no doubt would be in another. Schools might exchange the plants, shells, insects, minerals, and other natural curiosities of one locale for those of another. How easy, also, when the teacher or a pupil writes to a distant friend, even in foreign lands, to say, "Can you mail to me such and such an object?" secured, not by pecuniary outlay but by a little taking of thought, which will be a mutual pleasure to sender and receiver.

III. In our large towns and cities, where museums and collections are better understood and appreciated, the work of inaugurating a cabinet of specimens in natural history will be much easier. Some "true yoke-fellow" will be found to come to the aid of the teacher as soon as the subject is broached, and funds to purchase cases will be willingly supplied as soon as the effort is seen to be earnest and based on useful and scientific principles.

IV. The Brighton Museum of Natural History affords a good illustration of the splendid result of small united individual effort in a certain direction. For instance, it