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SECOND STANDARD.

THE PEDLAR'S CARAVAN.

I WISH I lived in a caravan,

With a horse to drive, like the pedlar-man!
Where he comes from nobody knows,

Or where he goes to, but on he goes !

His caravan has windows two,

And a chimney of tin that the smoke comes through;

He has a wife, with a baby brown,

And they go riding from town to town.

Chairs to mend, and delf to sell!

He clashes the basins like a bell,
Tea-trays, baskets, ranged in order,

Plates with the alphabet round the border!

The roads are brown, and the sea is

green,

But his house is just like a bathing-machine;
The world is round, and he can ride,

Rumble and splash, to the other side!

With the pedlar-man I should like to roam,
And write a book when I came home;
All the people would read my book,
Just like the Travels of Captain Cook.

From "LILLIPUT LEVEE."

SILLY WILLIE.

IN the village of Weston, there was a half foolish boy always to be found lying about in the fields or woods. He was an orphan, and lived with a dirty, drinking old woman, who called herself his aunt, but was no relation. She was willing to keep him for 2s. 6d. a week from the parish, but little enough of that 2s. 6d. was ever spent upon poor Willie, who roamed about like a stray dog, eat turnips, apples, and odd bits of bread that people gave him, though he never begged. He had had fits, stuttered, was weak on his legs, and seemed in both mind and body to be no better than a child of five years old, terrified at everything, and incapable of fixing his attention on anything. Now the Weston school-boys thought there was no fun in the world equal to hunting Willie. The moment he saw them let loose from school, he always ran, and they after him, hooting and hallooing like dogs pursuing a hare; and when he fell down, as often happened, though they did not hurt him, they threw mud or sand over him, and made the place ring again with their laughter.

One day, when driven very hard, just like a

stag at bay, he flew into the open door of George Randall's cottage, and young George shut out his tormentors, while his mother went to the gate, and, as she said, told "the young ruffians she should like to see them well punished." After this day the poor frightened boy often ran to the Randalls. He was such a mass of dirt and rags, that it was as much as a tidy woman like Mrs. Randall could stand to see him come in; but there was an old story that made her feel she could never turn him out. When her own boy was about three years old, he once fell into the river that runs through the village, and he always declared that Silly Willie jumped in and saved him. No one would believe that he had sense to do such a thing, but little George declared it was true, and certainly they were both that day drenched with water. At last the old woman died, and it seemed nothing could be done with Willie but send him to the Union, and the village generally rejoiced that they were rid of such a wretched object, and that he would no longer be neglected. But, six months after his removal, George Randall and his son were in Stonewall, and little George expressed such a strong wish to see how Silly Willie went on, that his father let him go to see him.

"Yes, you may see him," said the porter, "but it isn't any good, he won't speak, and he won't do nothing; he lies on the floor and cries like a baby; he's no sense, not he; he's been punished, but it's no use."

However, George was only the more anxious to

see him. He was lying on the stone floor of the Union infirmary; several idiotic and sick people were in the room. When he heard George's voice, he looked at him, saying,

"Oh take me out! take me out!"

"Why," said George, "you have tidy clothes now and enough to eat; why are you not happy?" "They shut me up! they shut me up!" he kept repeating, and he clung to George till he could hardly bear to leave him.

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"I wish you could take him out," said the master, we can do nothing with him, he has been put on punishment diet more than once to bring him to reason, but all in vain. 'Let me out!' are all the words he says."

George was obliged to leave him; but all the way home he tried to persuade his father to think of some way of getting him out. But his father thought George was silly indeed to wish it, and that the 2s. 6d. the parish would allow would pay no one for keeping him properly; besides, who would be plagued with such a boy? But George hoped he might do better with his mother, and he waited till Sunday-night, when the little ones were gone to bed.

"Oh, mother, I would give anything to get Willie away! he'll die, shut up there! all he cared for was being in the fields and the woods, and he knows ever so much about birds, and snails, and squirrels; he isn't foolish about them; and, mother, he did save my life when I was little, and, he's quite clean now and his hair quite short. They

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