Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

All of beauty, all of use,

That one fair planet can produce;
Brought from under every star
Blown from over every main,

And mixt as life is mixt with pain,

The works of peace with works of war!
War himself must make alliance

With rough labour and fine science,
Else he would but strike in vain.

And is the goal so far away?
Far, how far, no man can say,

Let us have our dream to-day.

O ye, the wise who think, the wise who reign,
From growing Commerce loose her latest chair,
And let the fair white-wing'd peacemaker fly
To happy havens under all the sky,

And mix the seasons and the golden hours,
'Till each man find his own in all men's good,
And all men work in noble brotherhood,

Breaking their mailéd fleets, and arméd towers,
And ruling by obeying nature's powers,

And gathering all the fruits of Peace, and crown'd with all her flowers.—Tennyson.

TRAINING SCHOOL
SCHOOL READER.

LESSON I.THE LOST CAMEL; OR, HABIT OF OBSERVATION.

A DERVISE was journeying alone in the desert, when two merchants suddenly met him: "You have lost a camel," said he to the merchants.

"Indeed we have," they replied.

"Was he not blind of his right eye, and lame in his left leg ?" said the dervise.

"He was," replied the merchants.

"Had he lost a front tooth ?" said the dervise.

"He had," rejoined the merchants.

"And was he not loaded with honey on one side, and wheat on the other?"

"Most certainly he was," they replied; "and, as you have seen him so lately, and marked him so particularly, you can, in all probability, conduct us to him."

"My friends," said the dervise, "I have never seen your camel, nor ever heard of him but from you."

"A pretty story, truly!" said the merchants; "but where are the jewels that formed a part of his cargo ?" "I have neither seen your camel nor your jewels," repeated the dervise.

On this they seized his person, and forthwith hurried him before the Cadi, where, on the strictest search,

nothing could be found upon him, nor could any evidence whatever be adduced to convict him, either of falsehood or of theft. They were then about to proceed against him as a sorcerer, when the dervise, with great calmness, thus addressed the court:

"I have been much amused with your surprise, and own that there has been some ground for your suspicions; but I have lived long, and alone; and I can find ample scope for observation even in a desert. I knew that I had crossed the track of a camel that had strayed from its owner, because I saw no mark of any human footstep on the same route; I knew that the animal was blind of one eye, because it had cropped the herbage only on one side of its path; and I perceived that it was lame in one leg, from the faint impression which that particular foot had produced upon the sand.

"I concluded that the animal had lost one tooth, because, wherever it had grazed, a small tuft of herbage was left uninjured in the centre of its bite. As to that which formed the burden of the beast, the busy ants informed me that it was corn on the one side, and the clustering flies that it was honey on the other."

This story is not without its moral. A habit of observation-of noticing what is going on around us— is of great use in storing the mind with knowledge, and preparing us for usefulness.

LESSON II.-THE WOOD-PECKER.

Mother. Did you ever see a wood-pecker?

Robert. O yes! I have wondered what he keeps knocking against the tree for, so long and so hard, with his bill. I should think he would get very tired sometimes.

Mother. He is very hungry, and is working for his food. You would be glad to work, too, Robert, for your food, if you could not get it in any other way. And you should be willing to work for it, which, perhaps, you may yet have to do.

Robert. What is the wood-pecker's food, mother?

Mother. It is, principally, worms and insects, which he finds in the trunks of old, decayed trees.

Robert. But why does he make so much noise in finding them?

Mother. The worms and insects are deep in the wood, where other kinds of birds never could reach them.

His bill is long, straight, hard, and sharp; and like a wedge at the tip of it. His tongue is round, something like a worm; very long, so that it can come out three or four inches beyond the bill; and has at the end of it a stiff, sharp, bony thorn. This bony end of the tongue has little teeth, as it were, on each side of it, standing backward, like the barb of a fishhook.

With his bill he chisels out a hole in the wood; and this is what he was doing, when you saw him knocking (as you said), and heard a great noise that he made. He keeps chiseling, till he comes to where the worms or insects are; and then, he suddenly darts out his long tongue upon them; seizes them with the sharp, hooked end of it; and draws them into his mouth.

The wood-pecker chisels a hole for its nest, in which to lay its eggs; and these holes, often, are very deep, so that the eggs may be safe. The eggs are usually laid on the rotten wood; but, sometimes, moss or wool is put into the nest, for the eggs to lie on.

You see what contrivance and skill are shown in the bill and tongue of this curious bird. You know the

design with which they were made,-to enable the woodpecker to get food, and to make a nest; and you are just as sure that God made them, and made them for this purpose, as that a chisel was made by some one, and that it was made to cut with, into wood. has a mallet to drive the chisel with; but the woodpecker's head is his mallet, and his skull is unusually thick, that his head may bear the jarring which his hard knocks make.

A man

I read lately an account of a wood-pecker which, I think, will interest you.

He made a deep hole, just as exactly and neatly as if it had been made with a mallet and chisel, to the very centre of the branch of a young, tough, white oak tree. The branch was from three to five inches round. He did this to find a worm, called à borer. The worm had made a hole in the branch, about as large round as a goose quill, four or five inches below the hole chiseled out by the wood-pecker. The worm was going upward, inside of the branch, when the woodpecker made his hole, just in the right place, to catch the worm with his barbed tongue, and devour him.

These worms injure the trees; and the wood-pecker, and other birds, which devour worms and insects, do a great deal of good. It is quite a pity that they should be killed.-Gallaudet.

LESSON III.-THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.

It was a summer evening,

Old Kaspar's work was done,

And he before his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun,

And by him sported on the green,

His little grandchild, Wilhelmine.

« ElőzőTovább »