Some fresh attraction with it brings,

A concert followed by some dances,

The opera if Patti sings.

Of course you're not, &c.

At twelve you waltz, at one you've leisure
To try some chicken and champagne ;
At two you do yourself the pleasure
Of starting off to waltz again;

At three your partners hate each other,
You scarcely know which loves you best,
Emotion you have none to smother,
But lightly with them all you jest.
At four your chaperon gives warning
That it is really time to go;

You wish good night, and say, next morning
At twelve you'll meet them in the Row.
Of course you're not, &c.

My darling, you're so very pretty,
I've often thought, upon my life,
That it would be a downright pity
To look upon you as a wife;
I don't think your ideas of marriage
With those of many would accord;
The opera, horses and a carriage

Are things so few men can afford.
And then you need so much devotion,
To furnish it who would not try?
But each would find it, I've a notion,
Too much for one man to supply.

Of course you're not, &c.
(By permission of the Author.)

A PRACTICAL LESSON IN ANCIENT HISTORY.

"MAX ADELER."

[Charles Heber Clark is among the most popular of American humourists. His chief works are "Out of the Hurly-Burly," "Elbow-Room," "Random Shots," and "Transformations."]

MR. BARNES, the master, read in the Educational Monthly that boys could be taught history better than in any other way by letting each boy in the class represent some historical character, and relate the acts of that character as if he had done them himself. This struck Barnes as a mighty good idea, and he resolved to put it in practice. The school had then progressed so far in its study of the history of Rome as the Punic wars, and Mr. Barnes immediately divided the boys into two parties, one Romans and the other Carthaginians, and certain of the boys were named after the

leaders upon both sides. All the boys thought it was a fine thing, and Barnes noticed that they were so anxious to get to the history lesson that they could hardly say their other lessons properly.

When the time came, Barnes ranged the Romans upon one side of the room and the Carthaginians on the other. The recitation was very spirited, each party telling about its deeds with extraordinary unction. After a while Barnes asked a Roman to describe the battle of Canne, whereupon the Romans hurled their copies of Wayland's Moral Science at the enemy. Then the Carthaginians made a battering-ram out of a bench and jammed it among the Romans, who retaliated with volleys of books, slates and chewed paper-balls. Barnes concluded that the battle of Cannæ had been sufficiently illustrated, and he tried to stop it; but the warriors considered it too good a thing to let drop, and accordingly the Carthaginians dashed over to the Romans with an other batteringram, and thumped a couple of them savagely.

When the Romans turned in, and the fight became general, a Carthaginian would grasp a Roman by the hair and hustle him around over the desk in a manner that was simply frightful, and a Roman would give a fiendish whoop and knock a Carthaginian over the head with Greenleaf's arithmetic. Hannibal got the head of Scipio Africanus under his arm, and Scipio, in his efforts to break away, stumbled, and the two generals fell and had a rough-and-tumble fight under the blackboard. Caius Gracchus prodded Hamilcar with a ruler, and the latter, in his struggles to get loose, fell against the stove and knocked down about thirty feet of stove-pipe. Thereupon the Romans made a grand rally, and in five minutes they chased the entire Carthaginian army out of the schoolroom, and Barnes along with it; and then they locked the door and began to hunt up the apples and lunch in the desks of the enemy.

After consuming the supplies they went to the windows and made disagreeable remarks to the Carthaginians, who were standing in the yard, and dared old Barnes to bring the foe once more into battle array. Then Barnes went for a policeman; and when he knocked at the door, it was opened, and all the Romans were found busy studying their lessons. When Barnes came in with the defeated troops he went for Scipio Africanus; and pulling him out of his seat by the ear, he thrashed that great military genius with a rattan until Scipio began to cry, whereupon Barnes dropped him and began to paddle Caius Gracchus. Then things settled down in the old way, and next morning Barnes announced that history in future would be studied as it always had been; and he wrote a note to the Educational Monthly to say that, in his opinion, the man who suggested the new system ought to be led out and shot. The boys do not now take as much interest in Roman history as they did on that day.

ADDITIONAL READINGS AND

RECITATIONS.

ENGLAND'S ANSWER.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

[See page 48.]

TRULY ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban;
Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man.

Flesh of the flesh that I bred, bone of the bone that I bare;
Stark as your sons shall be-stern as your fathers were.
Deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether;
But we do not fall on the neck nor kiss when we come together.
My arm is nothing weak, my strength is not gone by;
Sons, I have borne many sons, but my dugs are not dry.
Look, I have made ye a place and opened wide the doors,
That ye may talk together, your Barons and Councillors-
Wards of the Outer March, Lords of the Lower Seas,

Ay, talk to your grey mother that bore you on her knees!-
That ye may talk together, brother to brother's face-

Thus for the good of your peoples-thus for the Pride of the Race.
Also, we will make promise. So long as The Blood endures,

I shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength

is yours:

In the day of Armageddon, at the last great fight of all,

That our house stand together and the pillars do not fall.
Draw now the threefold knot firm on the ninefold bands,

And the law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands.
This for the waxen heath, and that for the wattlebloom,

This for the maple-leaf, and that for the southern broom.
The law that ye make shall be law, and I do not press my will,
Because ye are sons of The Blood, and call me mother still.
Now must ye speak to your kinsmen and they must speak to you,
After the use of the English, in straight-flung words and few.
Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways,
Baulking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise.
Stand to your work and be wise—certain of sword and pen,
Who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men.

(From "The Seven Seas." By kind permission of the Author, and Messrs. Methuen and Co.)

HANGING A PICTURE.

JEROME K. JEROME.

[Jerome Klapka Jerome was born as Walsall, 1859. He has successively Occupied the positions of clerk, schoolmaster, actor, journalist, editor, and author. His best-known books are Idle thoughts of an Idle Fellow " (1889); "Three Men in a Boat" (1889), from which our reading is taken; "Three Men on the Bummel" (1900).]

HARRIS always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw such a commotion up and down a house in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-maker's, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say

"Oh, you leave that to me. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I'll do all that."

And then he would take off his coat, and begin.

He would send the girl out for sixpen'orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and start the whole house.

"Now you go and get me my hammer, Will," he would shout; "and you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the stepladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! you run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell him, 'Pa's kind regards, and hopes his leg's better; and will he lend him his spirit-level?' And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out again for a bit of picture-cord; and, Tom!-where's Tom?-Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture."

And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut himself; and then he would spring round the room, looking for his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put the coat; and all the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat, while he would dance round and hinder them.

"Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came across such a set in all my life-upon my word, I didn't. Six of you!-and you can't find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the

Then he'd get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call out

"Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now. Might just as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it."

And when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger, and a new glass had been got. and the tools. and the ladder, and

the chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole family, including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a semicircle, ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a third would help him up on it and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of the nail, and drop it.

"There!" he would cry, in an injured tone; "now the nail's gone!"

And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he would stand on the chair and grunt, and want to know if he was to be kept there all the evening.

The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would have lost the hammer!

"Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great Heavens! Seven of you, gaping round there, and you don't know what I did with the hammer!

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in, and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could find it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would call us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he would take the rule, and remeasure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one and three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in his head, and go mad.

And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different results, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the original number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure it again.

He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical moment, when the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of forty-five, and was trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was possible for him to reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on to the piano, a really fine musical effect being produced by the suddenness with which his head and body struck all the notes at the same time.

And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the children to stand round and hear such language.

At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in his right hand. And with the first blow he would smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, on somebody's toes.

Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done.

"Oh! you women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle Podger would reply, picking himself up. "Why, I like doing a little job of this sort,"