ANDREW CARNEGIE came to America from Scotland in 1848, when he was eleven years of age. His first position was in a cotton factory in Allegheny, Pa. Then he became a telegraph messenger, studied telegraphy, and went into the employ of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He attended to business, and his advancement was steady. After the war he established a great iron industry at Pittsburg. He is the author of “An American Four-in-Hand in Britain," "Round the World," and "Democracy Triumphant."

Through his gifts to libraries, universities, colleges and pension funds in the United States and Great Britain, he has justly earned the title of the greatest benefactor of the age.

"Coaching in Britain" is published with the permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

THOMAS GRAY (Selected).

THOMAS GRAY (1716-71) was an English poet.

He was educated at Cambridge and afterward was made a member of the Cambridge faculty. The "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is his best and most popular poem. Gray ranks high among English authors as poet, prose writer, and scholar.

THE GREAT PYRAMID

The first glimpse that most travelers now get of the Pyramids is from the window of the railway carriage as they come from Alexandria; and it is not impressive. (It does not take one's breath away.) The well-known triangular forms look small and shadowy, and are too familiar to be in any way startling. It is only in approaching them, and observing how they grow with every foot of the road, that one begins to feel that they are not so familiar after all.

When at last the edge of the desert is reached, and the long sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform gained, and the Great Pyramid in all its unexpected bulk and majesty towers close above one's head, the effect is as sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and the horizon. It shuts out all the other pyramids. It shuts out everything but the sense of awe and wonder.

Now, too, one discovers that it was with the forms of the Pyramids, and only their forms, that one had been acquainted

THE GREAT PYRAMID

all these years past. Of their surface, their color, their rel

ative position, their number, one had hitherto no definite idea.

Even the Great Pyramid puzzles us with an unexpected sense of unlikeness. We all know that it was stripped of its

outer blocks some five hundred years ago to build Arab mosques and palaces. Nevertheless, the rugged, rock-like aspect of that giant stair-case takes us by surprise. Nor does it look like a partial ruin. It looks as though it had been left unfinished, and the workmen might be coming back to-morrow.

The color again is a surprise. Few persons can be aware beforehand of the rich tawny hue that Egyptian limestone assumes after ages of exposure to the blaze of an Egyptian sky. Seen in certain lights, the Pyramids look like piles of massy gold.

It is no easy task to realize, however imperfectly, the duration of six or seven thousand years. The Great Pyramid, which is supposed to have been some four thousand two hundred and odd years old at the time of the birth of Christ, is now in its seventh millennium. Suddenly the writer became aware, that these remote dates had never presented them

selves to her mind until this moment as anything but abstract numerals.

Now, for the first time, they were no longer figures, but years with their changes of season, their high and low Niles, their seed-times and harvests. More impressive by far than any array of figures or comparisons, was the shadow cast by the Great Pyramid as the sun went down.

The mighty shadow, sharp and distinct, stretched across the stony platform of the desert and over full three-quarters of a mile of the green plain below. It divided the sunlight in the upper air; and it darkened the space that it covered like an eclipse.

It was not without a thrill of something approaching to awe, that one remembered how this self-same Shadow had gone on registering, not only the height of the most stupendous gnomon ever set up by human hands, but the slow passage, day by day, of more than sixty centuries of the world's history.

It was still lengthening over the landscape as we went down the long sand-slope and gained the carriage. Some six or eight Arabs in fluttering white garments ran on ahead to bid us a last good-by. "You come again!" said they. "Good Arab show you everything. You see nothing this time."

tri-an'gu-lar, having three angles.
mil-len'ni-um, a thousand years.
e-clipse', a covering up, as an eclipse
of the moon.

AMELIA B. EDWARDS.

reg'is-ter-ing, making a record of.
stu-pen'dous, very large.
gno-mon, a structure for showing
the time of day.

AMELIA B. EDWARDS (1831-92) was an English author and traveler. She has written many novels, some histories and some popular books for children. Her book, "A Thousand Miles Up the Nile," from which our selection is taken, is considered a remarkably good book on Egypt.