right up towards the sky with it.  Higher and higher it went till the kite which was really as tall as the boy who owned it, didn’t look much bigger than his hat But Harry kept on letting out the string, till the hat looked like a bird with a great long tail.’ [Let speaker here shade his eyes with his hand and peer and point steadily up towards the sky and occasionally take a peep at the audience and see the boys and girls also looking up through the roof at the kite.  The writer has so caught them at it many a time.] Then John looked down to see how much string he had left, and he let out more and more, and when he looked up at the kite again he didn’t look at it at all—­because he could not see it.  It was out of sight!  But he knew it was up there all right for he felt it pull!

“Now, I guess this kite story is a fable, because in fables kites can talk as well as the boys who fly them.  So when the kite got up so high, the story says that it began to want to talk, and as there was nobody up there to talk to, it began to talk to itself, and here is what it said: 

“’My! but ain’t I high today?  Never got so high in all my life before.  How beautiful the world looks below me!  How beautiful the sky looks above me!  Dear me, I can’t be so very far from the man in the moon!  I have often heard of him, but have never met him.  Gee!  I wish that boy would let go of that string; if he would, I’d go up and shake hands with the man in the moon and ask him how he is.  I just hate to be held down all the time.  I heard Harry say, the other day, that he didn’t went to be tied to his mother’s apron string, and that he’d like to be his own man.’  Yes, and I’d like to be my own kite, too, and then I’d show these boys where I’d go.’  And the more the kite thought of being ‘held down,’ the madder it got and finally it said, ’If that boy don’t let go of that string, I’ll break it—­that’s what I’ll do, and I’ll go on up to the moon, now see if I don’t!’ And with that, the kite gave a sudden jerk—­and—­snap went the string!

“And what do you think, children—­did the kite reach the man in the moon?  Not much it didn’t!’ It began to act crazy and silly and drunk all at the same time!  And it wobbled, and wobbled and stumbled and tumbled and finally it fell in the dirt, battered and broken like that! [Detach your drawing, reverse it and reattach it to the drawing board; add the lines to complete Fig. 127.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 127]

“Now boys, why did the kite fall, when the string broke?  Because the very same string which had held it down was the very same thing which held it up!  And now listen—­don’t you boys and girls get as silly as the kite was.  Don’t you jerk, and pull and tug at your mother’s apron string and try to break it, so you can be ‘your own man’ while you are nothing but a boy or a girl?  If you break that string too soon, you are liable to tumble in the dirt as the kite did,