to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which rested between his legs.

"Now, you see, you don't do this thing a bit better than you did a fortnight ago; and I'll tell you what's the reason. You want to learn accounts; that's well and good. But you think all you need do to learn accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three times a week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of doors again, than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You go whistling about, and take no more care what you're thinking of than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that happened to be in the way, and if you get a good notion in 'em, it's pretty soon washed out again.

"You think knowledge is to be got cheap-you'll come and pay Bartle Massey sixpence a week, and he'll make you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowledge isn't to be got by paying sixpence, let me tell you; if you're to know figures, you must turn 'em over in your own heads, and keep your thoughts on 'em. There's nothing you can't turn into a sum, for there's nothing but what's got number in it—even a fool. You may say to yourselves, 'I'm one fool and Jack's another; if my fool's head weighed four pound, and Jack's three pound three ounces and three quarters, how many

penny-weights heavier would my head be than Jack's?'

"A man that has his heart in learning figures would make sums for himself, and work 'em in his head; when he sat at his shoemaking, he'd count his stitches by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself how much money he'd get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that rate-and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in.

"But the long and short of it is-I'll have nobody in my night-school that does'nt strive to learn what he came to learn, as hard as if he were striving to get out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I'll send no man away because he is stupid; if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not refuse to teach him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with them as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you can't show that you have been working with your own heads, instead of thinking you can pay mine to work for you. That's the last word I've got to say to you."

With this final sentence, Bartle Massey gave a

sharper rap than ever with his knobbed stick, and the discomfited lads got up with a sulky look.

NOTES FOR STUDY.

AR A BESQUE (běsk′), Arabian in DIS CRIM'I NATE, to note the difstyle, fanciful, ornamental. AQUI LINE, like an eagle's beak,

ferences between objects. NOUR'ISH MENT, that which sustains life.

curved. MO'MEN TA RY, lasting but a mo- EP'I THETS, words of censure or ment, sudden. COM PAS'SION ATE, to have pity or DIS COM FIT, to defeat the purpose sympathy for. of, to vanquish,

reproach.

CXII. AUTUMN, A DIRGE.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying;

And the year

On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves

dead

Is lying.

Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,

In your saddest array,-
Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each

gone

To his dwelling.

Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play;
Ye, follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

CXIII. THE DIRGE OF THE OLD YEAR.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more;

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

CXIV. THE FIRST PRINTERS, AND THEIR HOMES.

DONALD GRANT MITCHELL.

In the year 1420 there was living in the city of Haarlem an old gentleman, who kept the keys of the cathedral, and who used, after dinner, to walk