Ed. I've got something jolly for you this time.
Aunt C. What! Edmund has condescended.

Alice. Oh, Aunt, we have been so glad to have to hunt out our poems. It would have been such a long dull day without!

Aunt C. You would have had to sing, like the clown in "Twelfth Night"

"When that I was, and a little tiny boy,

With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain;

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

"A great while ago the world begun,
With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain;
But that's all one, our play is done,

For the rain it raineth every day."

SHAKSPERE.

Grace. What does it mean?

Aunt C. I doubt whether the clown could tell you,

or Shakspere either.

Ed. Well, I know what mine means.

THE WIND IN A FROLIC.

The wind one morning sprang up from sleep,
Saying, "Now for a frolic, now for a leap,
Now for a madcap galloping chace,
I'll make a commotion in every place."

So it swept with a bustle right through a big town,
Creaking the signs, and scattering down

Shutters, and whisking with merciless squalls
Old women's bonnets and gingerbread stalls.

There never was heard a much lustier shout
As the apples and oranges trundled about;
And the urchins that stand, with their thievish eyes,
For ever on watch, ran off each with a prize.

Then away to the field it went, blustering and humming,
And the cattle all wondered whatever was coming;

It plucked by the tails the grave matronly cows,
And toss'd the colts' manes all about their brows;

Till, offended at such an unusual salute,

They all turned their backs, and stood silent and mute.

So on it went capering and playing its pranks,
Whistling with reeds on the broad river banks,

Puffing the birds as they sat on the spray,
Or the traveller grave on the king's highway;
It was not too nice to hustle the bags
Of the beggar, and flutter his dirty rags.

'Twas so bold that it feared not to play its joke
With the doctor's wig or the gentleman's cloak.
Through the forest it roared, and cried gaily, "Now,
You sturdy old oaks, I'll make you bow."

And it made them bow without more ado,

As it crack'd their great branches through and through; Then it rushed like a monster o'er cottage and farm,

Striking the dwellers with sudden alarm,

And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm.

There were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps,

To see if their poultry were free from mishaps.

The turkeys they gabbled, the geese screamed aloud,
And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd.

There was rearing of ladders, and logs laying on

Where the thatch from the roof threatened soon to be gone;
But the wind had swept on, and had met in a lane
With a schoolboy who panted and struggled in vain,

For it toss'd him and twirled him, then passed, and he stood
With his hat in a pool, and his shoes in the mud.

Then away went the wind in its holiday glee,
And now it was far on the billowy sea,
And the lordly ships felt its staggering blow,
And the little boats darted to and fro.

But lo! it was night, and it sank to rest
On the sea-bird's rock in the gleaming west,
Laughing to think, in its fearful fun,

How little of mischief it had done!

Aunt C. Thank you, Edmund.

WM. HOWITT.

How much

William Howitt must have enjoyed writing that!
Alice. Who was he?

Aunt C. A kindly Quaker gentleman, very fond of country life. I do not think there were many events in his history, and he died so recently that it has not been written; but if I remember the newspaper statement aright, he and his brother died the same day-one in England and one abroad. He wrote several books on country life, and one called The Boy's Country Book is most diverting, and professes to give his own adventures when a lad living on a large farm. But I have another set of verses here, for Gracie, showing what the wind can

do. They were written by Mr. Keble, when a young.

man.

Alice. The author of The Christian Year?

Aunt C. Yes. He was a great lover of children, though he never had any of his own, and was especially fond of his nephew and nieces. Now, before anyone knew of him as a great and good man and poet, he was with some of these children at his father's house at Fairford, in Gloucestershire. There is a rookery

round the field, and the Wind in a frolic seems to have done much damage to the rooks' nests. He is himself the Uncle John of the poem, which he seems. to have written to show the children that "'tis an ill wind that blows nobody good."

THE ROOK.

There was a young Rook, and he lodged in a nook

Of Grandpapa's tallest elm-tree;

There came a strong wind, not at all to his mind,
All out of the north-west countree.

With a shrill piping sound this wind whistled round,
The boughs they all danced high and low;

Rock, rock went the nest where the birds were at rest,
Till over and over they go.