"I'd never have played with the Bailey boys out behind the barn!" said Jill.

"I wonder where the comet went to," said I.

"Whether we shall be plunged into,"" quoted Jill, in a horrible whisper, from that dreadful newspaper, "shall be plunged into a wild vortex of angry space or suffocated with noxious gases or scorched to a helpless crisp -or blasted

"When do you suppose they'll come after us?" I interrupted Jill.

That very minute somebody came. We heard a step, and then another. Then a heavy bang. Jill howled out a little. I didn't, for I was thinking how the cellar door banged like that.

Then came a voice, an awful, hoarse and trembling voice as ever you'd want to hear. "George Zacharias!"

Then I knew it must be the Judgment Day and that the Angel had me up in court to answer him. For you couldn't expect an angel to call you Jack when you were dead.

George Zacharias!" said the awful voice again. I didn't know what else to do, I was so frightened, so I just hollered out, "Here!" as I do at school.

"Timothy!" came the voice once more.

Now Jill had a bright idea. Up he shouted, "Absent!" at the top of his lungs.

"George! Jack! Jill! where are you? Are you killed? O, wait a minute and I'll bring a light!"

This didn't sound so much like Judgment Day as it did like Aunt John. I began to feel better. So did Jill. I sat up. So did he. It wasn't a minute till the light came into sight and something that looked like the cellar door, the cellar stairs, and Aunt John's spotted wrapper, and Miss Togy in a night-gown, away behind, as white as a ghost. Aunt John held the light above her head and looked down. I don't believe I shall ever see an angel that will make me feel any better to look at than Aunt John did that night.

"O you blessed boys!" said Aunt John, she was laugh

ing and crying together. "To think that you should have fallen through the old chimney to the cellar floor and be sitting there alive in such a funny heap as that!"

That was just what we had done. The old flooring— not very secure-had given way in the storm; and we'd gone down through two stories, where the chimney ought to have been, jam! into the cellar on the coal heap, and all as good as ever excepting the bedstead!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. FOR FURTHER ILLUSTRATION

Alcott, L.: Eight Cousins.

Little Men.

Little Women.

Aldrich, T. B.: Marjorie Daw. (In Marjorie Daw and Other Stories.)

Père Antoine's Date Palm. (In Marjorie Daw and Other

Stories.)

Two Bites at a Cherry.

Babie Bell. Thalia. (Poems.)

Clemens, S. L.: A Dog's Tale.

Col. Mulberry Sellers.
Huckleberry Finn.

Innocents Abroad.

Tom Sawyer.

Hale, E. E.: The Man Without a Country.

Harte, B.: M'Liss. (In Luck of Roaring Camp.)

Tennessee's Partner. (In Luck of Roaring Camp.)

The Outcasts of Poker Flat. (In Luck of Roaring Camp.) The
Heathen Chinee. (Poem.)

Jackson, H. H.: Ramona.

Sonnets and Lyrics.

Mitchell, D. G.: Reveries of a Bachelor.

Stockton, F. R.: A Story of Seven Devils. (In Amos Kilbright and Others.)

Rudder Grange.

Stowe, H. B.: Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Wallace, Lew: Ben-Hur. A Tale of the Christ.

Ward, E. S. Phelps: An Old Maid's Paradise. (In Old Maids

and Burglars in Paradise.)

The Gates Ajar.

II. FOR COLlateral ReadING

Nicholson, M.: The Hoosiers. (In National Studies in American Letters.)

Whitman, W.: Mississippi Valley Literature. (In Specimen Days.)

PROSE NON-FICTION

I. Edward Everett (1794-1865), one of America's great scholars, orators, and statesmen, was a graduate of Harvard and president of the college from 1845 to 1849. He was successively Governor of Massachusetts, United States Senator, Secretary of State, and Ambassador to England. He was an eloquent public speaker and is perhaps best remembered

as an orator.

WASHINGTON ABROAD AND AT HOME

(From The Character of Washington. A speech delivered February 22, 1856)

I feel, sir, more and more, as I advance in life, and watch with mingled confidence, solicitude, and hope, the development of the momentous drama of our national existence, seeking to penetrate that future which His Excellency has so eloquently foreshadowed, that it is well worth our while that it is at once one of our highest social duties and important privileges to celebrate with ever-increasing solemnity, with annually augmented pomp and circumstance of festal commemoration, the anniversary of the nation's birth, were it only as affording a fitting occasion to bring the character and services of Washington, with ever fresh recognition, to the public attention, as the great central figure of that unparalleled group, that “noble army” of chieftains, sages, and patriots, by whom the Revolution was accomplished.

This is the occasion, and here is the spot, and this is the day, and we citizens of Boston are the men, if any in the land, to throw wide open the portals of the temple of memory and fame, and there gaze with the eyes of a reverent and grateful imagination on his benignant countenance and majestic form. This is the occasion and the

day; for who needs to be told how much the cause of independence owes to the services and character of Washington; to the purity of that stainless purpose, to the firmness of that resolute soul? This is the spot, this immortal hall, from which as from an altar went forth the burning coals that kindled into a consuming fire at Lexington and Concord, at Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights. We citizens of Boston are the men; for the first great success of Washington in the Revolutionary War was to restore to our fathers their ancient and beloved town. This is the time, the accepted time, when the voice of the Father of his Country cries aloud to us from the sods of Mount Vernon, and calls upon us, east and west, north and south, as the brethren of one great household, to be faithful to the dear-bought inheritance which he did so much to secure for us.

But the fame of Washington is not confined to our own country. Bourdaloue, in his eulogy on the military saint of France, exclaims, "The other saints have been given by the Church to France, but France in return has given St. Louis to the church." Born into the family of nations in these latter days, receiving from foreign countries and inheriting from ancient times the bright and instructive example of all their honored sons, it is the glory of America, in the very dawn of her national existence, to have given back to the world many names of which the luster will never fade; and especially one name of which the whole family of Christendom is willing to acknowledge the unenvied pre-eminence; a name of which neither Greece nor Rome, nor republican Italy, Switzerland, nor Holland, nor constitutional England can boast the rival. “A character of virtues so happily tempered by one another" (I use the language of Charles James Fox), "and so wholly unalloyed by any vices, is hardly to be found on the pages of history.'

It is delightful to witness the generous recognition of Washington's merits, even in countries where, from political reasons, some backwardness in that respect might have been anticipated. Notwithstanding his leading agency

in wresting a colonial empire from Great Britain, England was not slow to appreciate the grandeur and beauty of his character. Mr. Rufus King, our minister at that time to the Court of St. James, writing to General Hamilton in 1797, says:

"No one who has not been in England can have a just idea of the admiration expressed among all parties for General Washington. It is a common observation, that he is not only the most illustrious, but the most meritorious character which has yet appeared."

Nor was France behind England in her admiration of Washington. Notwithstanding the uneasy relations of the two countries at the time of his decease, when the news of his death reached Paris, the youthful and fortunate soldier who had already reached the summit of power by paths which Washington could never have trod, commanded the highest honors to be paid to his memory. "Washington," he immediately exclaimed, in the orders of the day, "is dead! This great man fought against tyranny; he consolidated the liberty of his country. His memory will be ever dear to the French people, as to all freemen in both hemispheres, and especially to the soldiers of France, who like him and the American soldiers are fighting for liberty and equality. In consequence, the First Consul orders that for ten days black crape shall be suspended from all the standards and banners of the republic." By order of Napoleon a solemn funeral service was performed in the "Invalides," in the presence of all that was most eminent in Paris. "A sorrowful cry," said Fontanes, the orator chosen for the occasion, "has reached us from America, which he liberated. It belongs to France to yield the first response to the lamentation which will be echoed by every great soul. These august arches have been well chosen for the apotheosis of a hero."

How often in those wild scenes of her revolution, when the best blood of France was shed by the remorseless and ephemeral tyrants who chased each other, dagger in hand, across that dismal stage of crime and woe, during the reign of terror, how often did the thoughts of Lafayette and his