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VOL. III

ND you're going to buy a bicycle with it?" Mr. Mason asked, with a trace

of a sneer in his face.

"Yes, sir; and it's a beauty, too!" replied Dan, with the greatest enthusiasm, for he was so eager to make the long expected purchase that he could hardly eat his dinner. "It has ball bearings all around, and-"

"I don't care what kind of bearings it has!" interrupted his father, impatiently; "nor whether it has any or not; sixty dollars is a large sum to spend on nonsense.' "Nonsense, father? It is not nonsense. Riding a wheel is most invigorating exercise. All the doctors say so.'

"So is sawing wood invigorating exerecise. All the doctors say that too, don't they? You had better save your money,"

"But," Dan objected. "I should have no fun out of it then."

"Fun!" repeated the father, contemptuously. "What good will fun do you? Put the money out at interest, earn more as you have earned this, then see what you will have at the end of the year.

Dan shook his head.

"Or, better than that," Mr. Mason continued, buy all the fine young pigs you can. Take them

No. 7

out to my east farm and put them in with mine. Wilkins will take care of them as he does the rest. He may feed them out of my cornbins without a cent of expense to you. Are you enough of a farmer to know how much you will make out of it?"

Dan was just finishing his pudding, and he did not reply.

"Will you do it?" Mr. Mason asked.

"Father," Dan replied, slowly, "I've worked hard for the money to buy a wheel, and nothing else will satisfy me."

Mr. Mason's face became red with anger. He was a kind-hearted man, but he had such a quick temper that he often said thing he did not mean.

"You'r a fool!" he declared, hotly.

Dan quietly arose from his chair, pushed it gently to its place against the table. looked straight at his father and said, firmly but respectfully:

"Well then, I'd rather be a fool and have the wheel!"

And, having said this, Dan left the room.

For a long time it had been his dream to have a bicycle. He had once asked his father to buy one for him, but he had met with a

refusal so decided that he ask no

more.

He thought it all over one day while sitting in the hay-loft, and he came to the conclusion that there was but one thing for him to do. That was to get the wheel himself.

All Dan's money amounted to eleven dollars and seventy-five cents. He determined, however, to work until he could increase the sum to the price of a wheel. There was an occasional job he could get, he thought, and he was not afraid of work.

On the day he made up his mind to buy a wheel for himself, his father said to him:

"Dan, has Adam Bruner been here to saw that wood yet?"

"No, sir." answered Dan. "He's at work in the saw mill."

"Well," Mr. Mason replied, “it is getting along in the fall, and the wood must be sawed, some of it split, and all of it piled in the shed. you get a man to do the work, and put him at it this after

"All right, sir," said Dan.

As soon as Mr. Mason had gone to his office, Dan went out to look at the wood. There were ten cords of it. At a dollar a cord for sawing and splitting, and thirty cents for piling, Dan calculated that some man would receive thirteen dollars. He thurst his hands down into his pockets, spread his feet apart and thought awhile.

"I might as well be that man myself." he remarked aloud. "Besides, sawing wood is invigorating exercise. Father said so.

The wood saw hung in the shed, but it was dull. Dan took a quarter of a dollar from his little hoard and had the saw sharpened.

By that time it was three o'clock in the afternoon. There were three hours of light left.

Throwing off his coat, Dan went to work with a will. It was a pleasure to see the thin blade of the saw sink into the wood and to hear the severed stick fall to the ground. Dan was delighted to see how rapidly the pile melted away. His vigorous young muscles were tired when he sat down to supper that evening, and his appetite was amazing.

"Did you get a man to saw that wood?" his father asked.

"Yes, sir," replied Dan, for he felt every inch a man.

The days went by, and the long wood pile slowly disappeared. Dan could only work out of school hours and on Saturdays, but at last the task was completed.

"I see the wood is all sawed at last," said Mr. Mason to his son. "The man has been a long time at it. Tell him to come to the office and get his money.

"I'll tell him," promised Dan; and he smiled at his mother, who was in the secret.

Mr. Mason was surprised that afternoon when his own son called as the wood-sawer.

"What is your bill, Mr. Woodsawer?" he asked, with assumed gravity.

"You always pay Adam Bruner thirteen dollars for that much work," Dan answered, drawing a long breath; "and I tell you, father, it's worth it.

"Well, then, here's your money, with a little extra for your industry."

And Mr. Mason handed his son a ten and a five dollar bill.

Dan was the happiest boy in town when he counted his money that night. Twenty-six dollars

and fifty cents. His fund was growing rapidly.

The next day he looked around for more worlds to conquer.

Mr. Prichard, one of the neighbors, had an old phaeton which was in need of paint, and, as it would hardly pay to have a professional carriage painter expend skill upon it, Dan offered to do as good a job as he could for three dollars, if Mr. Prichard would furnish the paint.

Mr. Prichard accepted the offer, expecting only a rough piece of work. But Dan was not content with performing his work poorly. He scraped all the old paint off very carefully, and paid such close attentien to every detail of the work that, when it was done, Mr. Prichard not only praised him very highly, but recommended him as a very good workman to a man in the next block who had a buggy to be painted.

From that time on Dan had all the work he could do in his spare time. People thought it strange that Dan Mason, whose father was reputed as rich, should work like the son of a poor man; but Dan was not for a moment ashamed of doing honest labor, and he kept at it all the winter and the following spring, even into the month of June, before he announced that he had enough money to buy a bicycle.

Then his father, angered by thinking it a waste of money, called

him a fool.

"You should not have spoken so harshly to the boy," said Mrs. Mason, that night, after Dan had gone to bed.

"No, Mary, I should not." Mr. Mason admitted; "but I was worried about something else, and

"What were you wor John?'

"It must be kept quiet," Mr. Mason answered: "and it is this. There were two hundred dollars taken from the safe last night!"

"Is it possible? How did the burglar break the safe?"

"That is the strange thing about it. He din't break it open. He knew the combination, took the money and left the safe locked."

"Can it be possible-"

Mrs. Mason stopped abruptly, for she did not want to say what she thought. There was but one man besides Mr. Mason who knew the combination, and he was Elias Walsh, the head clark, who was supposed to be perfectly honest.

"No it couldn't have been Elias, Mr. Mason replied. "I would trust him with anything. Someone else has by some chance found out the combination and robbed us. But never mind; I have informed the police. Watch will be kept for any persons with an unusual amount of money. Thieves are most always indiscreet. More than that, Elias has changed the combination, and we shall loose no more."

The summer went on but no trace of the thief was discovered. Mrs. Mason told Dan of the robbery, and he was sorry for the loss, but as it could not be helped, he continued to enjoy to the fullest extent the bicycle he had bought.

Sometimes he would ride out one of the pikes or coast on Grimster Hill with Elias Walsh, and they would occasionally talk together of the robbery and wish they could find the thief.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

202

ΤΗ

'HE Roman empire was the last of the great powers of the old world to fulfil the decree of God, I wish that my little friends would read the interpretation of king Nebuchadnezzar's dream as given by the prophet Daniel, you will find it in the second chapter of Daniel. And then I wish that you would have your father or mother tell you how, in the light of history, the propnet Daniel, was a true prophet of God. It is an instructive story, telling the hisof the world and God's power over all, from Daniel to the end of time. While I have not the space to tell you the dream and all about it, still I will tell you about the nation that was represented by the legs of the image which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream. This

nation was the Roman empire. In Rome nothing grew, everything was made, everything was done with a purpose, their religion and all. Their religion was regular, exact, precise. All forms of religion might come to Rome, but like everything else they must be subject to the state; but state and laws can only control the outward action or show, they have no control over the heart and mind. And so the religion of Rome was very much an outward religion; if the outward show was all right

they took but little notice of what the people thought or felt. As Gallio, one of the rulers over the Jews, said: "If it be a question of words and names and of law, look ye to it; for I am no judge of matters." All nations could go to Rome and there worship their gods so long as they did not speak against the gods of Rome.

Rome like Greece had many ods, some of them they borrowed or begged from Greece and the rest from other countries; few, if any, were of their own creation; though they often gave to them different powers and different names from what they originally had. We will now learn something about their various gods, their names and what they represented. One of the oldest was the god Janus, who presided over the beginning and end. The month which opens the year, January, receives its name from this god. He was the god of the year; his temple had four sides for the four seasons, each side had three windows to represent the different months. This god is said to have been taken from India. In the Sanskrit, the sacred book of India, there is a god named "Jan" meaning "to be born."

In every important city therewere temples erected to the three

gods, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; and at the capital there was a great temple of three parts, the central part belonged to Jupiter, while the wings were dedicated to Juno and Minerva. This temple was two hundred and fifteen feet long and two hundred feet wide. The walls and roof were of marble covered with gold and silver. The amount of wealth spent to build and to build and furnish this great temple is said to have been very great. But I But I must tell you about these three gods. Jupiter, according to many, was the chief god of Rome; he was the god of thunder and lightning, the supreme god of the skies. In the time of the emperor Augustus, he was spoken of as "a cold Jupiter" for a cold sky and a "bad Jupiter" for stormy weather. He had many different names. It is said that there were over three hundred temples built to his vari-, ous names. Juno was the queen of heaven, the goddess of womenhood, the friend of virgins and wives: she was also the patroness of marriage. The month of June The month of June was named after her, and is still the favorite month of marriage. Minerva was the goddess of wisdom We might call these three the trinity of Roman religion: Jupiter represented power, Minerva, wisdom, and Juno, affection or love. Besides these there were many other gods, some of them had temples erected to their names and some of them did not; we may divide them into four classes.

First, gods representing the powers of nature as follows:

1, Sol, the sun; 2, Luna, the Moon; 3, Mater Matuta, mother of day, that is the dawn. 4, Tempestales, the tempests. 5, Fontus, the fountains. 6, Divus Pater Tiberinus, of tather Tiber, god of

the great river Tiber. Neptunus, god of the sea. 8, Portunus, the god of harbors. 9, Tranquillitas, the goddess of calm weather; and some others.

Second: Gods of human relations.

1, Vesta, one of the oldest and most loved of all the gods and goddesses. She was queen of the hearth, protector of house and home. In her later history, when Rome became as one great family, there was kept burning in the temple of Vesta the sacred fire, kept alive night and day by the vestal virgins, of whom I will tell you later.

The best side of Roman manners is found in this worship and its associations; the love of home, the respect for family life, the hatred for impurity and immodesty. The goddess Vesta was often called "the mother" and "immovable mother."

2, The Lares and Penates, while some writers call these two gods, I think they were rather spirits than gods. The Lar, or Lares, were thought to be the souls of ancestors, which resided in the house and guarded it. The Penates were of a higher order, but with much the same office, they were supposed to take part in all the joys and sorrows of the family; the Roman felt that he was surrounded in his home by invisible friends and guardians. No other nation, except China, has carried the religion of home so far.

3, The Genius, this part of the Roman worship was not general, but was confined to certain parts of the empire.

Third:-The gods of the human soul, which were as follows: Mens, mind, or intellect. 2, Pudicitia, chastity. 3, Pietas, piety, reverance fer parents. 4, Fides, fidelity.