“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak
      For anything tougher than suet;
    Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak: 
      Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

   “In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
      And argued each case with my wife;
    And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
      Has lasted the rest of my life.”

   “You are old,” said the youth; “one would hardly suppose
      That your eye was as steady as ever;
    Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—­
      What made you so awfully clever?”

   “I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
      Said his father, “don’t give yourself airs! 
    Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? 
      Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs!”

LEWIS CARROLL.

 ("Alice in Wonderland.”)

 THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE GLOW-WORM.

“The Nightingale,” by William Cowper (1731-1800), is a favourite with a teacher of good taste, and I include it at her request.

    A nightingale, that all day long
    Had cheered the village with his song,
    Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
    Nor yet when eventide was ended,
    Began to feel, as well he might,
    The keen demands of appetite;
    When, looking eagerly around,
    He spied far off, upon the ground,
    A something shining in the dark,
    And knew the glow-worm by his spark;
    So, stooping down from hawthorn top,
    He thought to put him in his crop. 
    The worm, aware of his intent,
    Harangued him thus, right eloquent: 
   “Did you admire my lamp,” quoth he,
   “As much as I your minstrelsy,
    You would abhor to do me wrong,
    As much as I to spoil your song;
    For ’twas the self-same power divine,
    Taught you to sing and me to shine;
    That you with music, I with light,
    Might beautify and cheer the night.” 
    The songster heard his short oration,
    And warbling out his approbation,
    Released him, as my story tells,
    And found a supper somewhere else.

WILLIAM COWPER.

PART II.

 The Little Child

 [Illustration]

 THE FROST.

“Jack Frost,” by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is perhaps a hundred years old, but he is the same rollicking fellow to-day as of yore.  The poem puts his merry pranks to the front and prepares the way for science to give him a true analysis.

    The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night,
    And whispered, “Now I shall be out of sight;
    So through the valley and over the height,
      In silence I’ll take my way: 
    I will not go on with that blustering train,
    The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,
    Who make so much bustle and noise in vain,
      But I’ll be as busy as they.”