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prise, I was told that there had been very little wind in the neighborhood, although in the streets and gardens many branches and twigs had fallen in a manner which excited great surprise.

Many wondrous accounts of the devastating effect of this hurricane were circulated in the country, after its occurrence. Some log-houses, we were told, had been overturned and their inmates destroyed. One person informed me that a wire sifter had been conveyed by the gust to a distance of many miles. Another had found a cow lodged in the fork of a half-broken tree. But, as I am disposed to relate only what I have myself seen, I will not lead you into the region of romance, but shall content myself with saying that much damage was done by this awful visitation. The valley is yet a desolate place, overgrown with briers and bushes, thickly entangled amidst the tops and trunks of the fallen trees, and is the resort of ravenous animals, to which they betake themselves when pursued by man, or after they have committed their depredations on the farms of the surrounding district. I have crossed the path of the storm, at a distance of a hundred miles from the spot where I witnessed its fury, and, again, four hundred miles farther off in the state of Ohio. Lastly, I observed traces of its ravages on the summits of the mountains connected with the Great Pine Forest of Pennsylvania, three hundred miles beyond the place last mentioned. In all these different parts, it appeared to me not to have exceeded a quarter of a mile in breadth. AUDUBON.

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B. The following notes are from a book of manuscript memoranda kept by Charles Dickens. His biographer, Forster (Life of Dickens, vol. iii, chap. 12), tells us that Dickens used these notes in one of his novels. From these notes think what the description of the house will be, and then look up the passage in Little Dorrit that describes the home of the Barnacles.

Our House. Whatever it is, it is a first-rate situation, and a fashionable neighborhood. (Auctioneer called it "a gentlemanly residence.") A series of little closets squeezed up into the corner of a dark street - but a Duke's Mansion round the corner. The whole house just large enough to

hold a vile smell.

The air breathed in it, at the best of times, a kind of distillation of Mews.

C. Suppose that you were permitted to make just four notes by which to recall the chief contents of the following; what would they be? For what sentences in the selection does each of your notes stand? Into what four successive groups, then, may the sentences of this selection be divided?

If I were a bird, in building my nest I should follow the example of the bobolink, placing it in the midst of a broad meadow, where there was no spear of grass, or flower, or growth unlike another to mark its site. I judge that the bobolink escapes the dangers to which I have adverted as few or no other birds do. Unless the mowers come along at an earlier date than she has anticipated, that is, before July 1, or a skunk goes nosing through the grass, which is unusual, she is as safe as a bird well can be in the great open of nature. She selects the most monotonous and uniform place she can find amid the daisies or the timothy and clover, and places her simple structure upon the ground in the midst of it. There is no concealment, except as the great conceals the little, as the desert conceals the pebble, as the myriad conceals the unit. You may find the nest once, if your course chances to lead you across it and your eye is quick enough to note the silent brown bird as she darts quickly away; but step three paces in the wrong direction, and your search will probably be fruitless. My friend and I found a nest by accident one day, and then lost it again one minute afterward. I moved away a few yards

to be sure of the mother bird, charging my friend not to stir from his tracks. When I returned, he had moved two paces, he said (he had really moved four), and we spent a half hour stooping over the daisies and the buttercups, looking for the lost clew. We grew desperate, and fairly felt the ground all over with our hands, but without avail. I marked the spot with a bush, and came the next day, and with the bush as a centre, moved about it in slowly increasing circles, covering, I thought, nearly every inch of ground with my feet, and laying hold of it with all the visual power that I could command, till my patience was exhausted, and I gave up, baffled. I began to doubt the ability of the parent birds themselves to find it, and so secreted myself and watched. After much delay, the male bird appeared with food in his beak, and satisfying himself that the coast was clear, dropped into the grass which I had trodden down in my search. Fastening my eye upon a particular meadow-lily, I walked straight to the spot, bent down, and gazed long and intently into the grass. Finally my eye separated the nest and its young from its surroundings. My foot had barely missed them in my search, but by how much they had escaped my eye I could not tell. Probably not by distance at all, but simply by unrecognition. They were virtually invisible. The dark gray and yellowish brown dry grass and stubble of the meadow bottom were exactly copied in the color of the half-fledged young. More than that, they hugged the nest so closely and formed such a compact mass, that though there were five of them, they preserved the unit of expression,-no single head or form was defined; they were one, and that one was without shape or color, and not separable, except by closest scrutiny, from the one of the meadow bottom. That nest prospered, as bobolinks' nests doubtless generally do; for, notwithstanding the enormous slaughter of the birds during their fall migrations by Southern sportsmen, the

bobolink appears to hold its own, and its music does not diminish in our Northern meadows.

- BURROUGHS, Birds and Bees.

D. The following essay, Of Studies, by Lord Bacon (1561-1626) is, like all of his other essays, greatly condensed. It reads like a collection of notes. Many of its words and phrases are used in a different meaning from that which we attach to them to-day. Suppose you wish to make this essay perfectly intelligible to a pupil of the upper grammar grades, who, as you are reading it to him, stops you at each of the places marked by the little numbers and asks for an explanation. What will you say? Write out the. explanation of one of the phrases, using just such language as you would employ in talking with the pupil.

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Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.1 Their chief use for delight, is in privateness2 and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition3 of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn' studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them for they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; 10 nor to believe and take for granted; " nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that

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is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; 12 and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy,13 and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books: else distilled 15 books are like common distilled waters, flashy 16 things. Reading maketh a full man; conference 17 a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; 18 and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric,19 able to contend. "Abeunt studia in mores." 20 Nay, there is no stond 21 or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought 22 out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; bowling 23 is good for the stone and reins; 24 shooting 25 for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away 26 never so little, he must begin again: if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the Schoolmen; 27 for they are cymini sectores: 28 if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

E. Make notes for an essay on one of the following subjects (suggested by the paragraphs quoted on preceding pages of this book) or on some other subject that you would like to write about. (1) A quiet street. (2) Dangers of hunting. (3) My best friend. (4) Habits of squirrels. (5) Work to do in a garden. (6) An ideal spot for a home. (7) Uses of studying literature. Now pick

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