which disappoints people when they visit salt water for the first time. They expect too much.

4. Look at the big wave just ready to break. Where did it come from? How long have these waves been pounding upon the shore? How old is the sea? If you wait here a little while, you will notice that the waves are slowly coming nearer and nearer, or are moving off, leaving the beach bare. Taste the water. It is bitter and salty, like brine. These are strange things, and perhaps if you sit here by the water for a while, you may learn something of what they mean.

5. The world is like a great picture book, full of stories more wonderful than any fairy tale. The boy or girl who has eyes to see, can read this book as he walks over its pages. The sea is one of the best pictures in that book; and its history and work make the strangest story that you have ever heard.

6. The water which you see from the eastern shore of the United States is a part of the Atlantic Ocean. If an ocean steamship should sail straight toward the horizon at a speed of three hundred miles a day, she would be ten days in crossing to Europe. Yet this ocean is only a long gulf between the continents. Outside of this gulf is the real ocean, covering almost three fourths of the entire earth, or, as it is measured, about 146,000,000 square miles of water.

7. How old is the sea? Thousands of millions would fail to tell the number of years that the sea has covered the earth. Before there was any dry land as we see it to-day, there was water everywhere. The land sprang from the sea. These waves helped to build up the hills and rocks. The tides helped to carve out the continents.

Nearly all the surface of the dry land was once dissolved in the sea, just as to-day we find salt dissolved in the sea

A SAILOR'S SONG OF THE SEA.

1. The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runs the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies.

2. I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!

I am where I would ever be,

With the blue above and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go;

If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

3. I love, oh! how I love to ride.

On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloud his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest blasts do blow.

4. I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And back I flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeks its mother's nest;
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the deep blue sea!

5. And I have lived, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor's life,

With wealth to spend and power to range,
But never have sought or sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,

Shall come on the wild and boundless sea.

1. How many of you who read this book have ever had a ride on the back of a camel? Not many, I am sure. You have not missed much in the way of comfort; for it is a very disagreeable experience to any one who is not used to such a motion.

2. In the first place, the driver orders the camel to kneel, for his back is so high when standing that you could not get into the saddle without a ladder. When the animal is on the ground, the driver stands by his head to keep him quiet while you climb into the saddle.

This saddle is not like the saddle of a horse, but is a sort of dish in which you sit with your feet hanging over the side.

3. When you are well placed, and ready to hold on with all your might, the driver tells the beast to get up. He makes three distinct motions before he regains his feet first a backward plunge, then a forward one, and then another one backward. If you look at a camel when he is getting up, you will find that he rises first on the knees of his fore-legs, then on his hind-feet, and lastly on his fore-feet.

4. When he is up and starts off, you begin to understand that riding a camel is not the best fun in the world. The motion throws the rider backward and forward at every step, and in a little while he begins to feel as if he were being shaken to pieces. When the camel trots or runs the motion is far worse than a walking gait.

5. After the first day's traveling on the back of a camel, one feels as though he had been pretty thoroughly beaten, and he will not lose this feeling for a week. But by the end of a fortnight he thinks no more of mounting a camel than of getting on the back of a horse.

6. Suppose we are mounted and off on a ride across the desert. If we have a driver, he walks ahead, leading the animal by a rope; but if we manage alone, we hold the rope in our own hands. Our steed is usually obedient and patient, but he sometimes becomes vicious, and he may run away. It takes a long time to become really acquainted with a camel, and to feel that you can fully trust him.

7. Looking out on the desert, there is not a blade of grass to be seen. Everything is bare. The ground be