Kansas University Weekly.
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thus unconsciously adding to the already resplendant polish of seat and desk. The big boy in the back seat was artistically carving his initials in the desk. "Recess," said the Master, and I was at liberty. I gained during that three quarters of an hour, a vivid and lasting impression of what is now "my old school-house."
M. E. R.
--through the bars of childhood, out into the field beyond.
The Old School-Room.
The room had, indeed, a dilapidated appearance, and as I gazed about it there came back to me memories of happy days and boyish pleasures never to be forgotten.
The master's desk with its stout legs and green cover stood in its old place on the platform. The great ink well, the common property of the school, was gone from its accustomed corner of the desk, but there still remained the well worn spelling book and the dog-eared Webster so familiar to us all. Even the master's chair, somewhat antiquated and much the worse from usage still seemed to retain the awe-inspiring influence of the imperial throne of a despot. On the wall within reach, hung the birch scepter, frayed at the end, it is true, but still capable of working wonders when in the hands of the master.
The long benches across the room served the double purpose of recitation benches and bad deportment seats. Many an hour has been spent on those old seats, and many a battle has there been fought between work and idleness, and with the unwelcomed assistance of the master, work was victorious. The little girl who cried to sit with her big sister and the little boy who ran away at recess, always occupied the front seats. Year by year as they grew larger and wiser they moved back until finally, after having spent a year in the back seats, they were graduated to the parental cornfield.
A. R.
--through the bars of childhood, out into the field beyond.
His Little Cousin.
She was only a school-girl, not yet eighteen. Young for her age, too, and considered almost a child. But in some ways she had passed
She had met him, her cousin, the previous summer when she was visiting her grandmother in the East. He was a college boy, just reaching a splendid manhood, and treated her, "his little cousin," very kindly in a patronizing, collegiate manner. She, from looking up to him in respectful awe, had come to love him with all the strength of her being, with a love neither lessened nor rendered sad by the fact that it never occurred to him that she was more than a child, just his "little cousin."
And now as she knelt in the rear of the dimly lighted church on this dreary autumn day, as she heard the soft, sad strains of the organ mingling with the mournful patter of the rain, she thought of her love for him, and of the times he had come to her in the dusk, and putting his arm tenderly about her, had comforted her when homesick or discourged. She seemed to feel his presence, and looked up with a startled glance; but she was alone.
She thought of all these things and her heart ached. For now, perhaps at this very moment, in a distant Southern city, in another church, another priest was saying the last sad words and sprinkling the dust over her loved one's form. He was dead, killed in a wreck, far away from home and kindred. She thought of this, too, and putting her hands to her face, wept bitter, woman's tears.
And no one knew.
AGNES THOMPSON.
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The Discovery of Starched Linen.
Tong Yue Ting, a native of Chow about five hundred years before the time of Confucius, was the first man to invent starched linen. At that time large linen cuffs were very fashionable in Chow, and Tong, though quite poor, had a pair of these cuffs which were the pride of his heart. One Sabbath morning Tong, who had slept rather late, hastily prepared a dish of rice soup and was just beginning to use his chop sticks when one of his cuffs became detached from his shirt and fell into the dish. As