HOW SPORT SAVED THE KITTENS. One ON a large farm, there was an old cat with five little kittens. of the kittens was gray, like its mother; another was black, with one white paw; a third was black all over; while the other two looked just alike. The mother cat told her kittens to be kind and polite to every one,— and to be very kind to dogs,—and each night, before going to sleep, she made them repeat these words: "Let dogs delight to bark and bite, but little kittens never." One day, a big dog named Sport came to live on the farm. Sport was full of fun, and he thought that chasing cats was great fun. Near the barn in which the cat and kittens lived, grew five large apple-trees; and when Sport first saw the cat family, he thought what fun it would be to frighten the mother into the hay-mow, and chase each one of the five kittens up a tree. So he gave a loud bark, and sprang in upon the happy brood. To his great surprise, the kittens, instead of arching their backs up to twice their size, and hissing in an ill-bred way, all sat quite still, and looked quietly at the stranger, to see what he was going to do next. Then there was a long pause, followed by two short paws which the gray kitten put out toward the dog, as though she would like to shake hands with him if she only knew how. This so amused Sport that he tapped the kitten very gently on the back, and then the cat, dog, and kittens were soon rolling and tumbling about the barn floor in a frolic. From that moment, Sport and the cat family were great friends. Not many days after this, the five kittens were playing along the bank of a small river which ran behind the barn, and, spying a piece of board which lay with one end on the ground and the other in the water, they all jumped upon it. But they were no sooner upon it than the board broke loose from the shore, and started down the stream! The kittens were badly frightened, and cried aloud for help, and though the old cat hurried out of the barn, she could not do anything for them. She could only rush up and down the bank, and she was afraid that all the kittens would be carried down to the mill-pond and over the dam. But suddenly she heard a well-known bark, and the next moment Sport -dear old Sport-was at her side! The good dog saw what the trouble was at once, and the thought came to him that, if he should bark just as loud as he could, some one might run down to the river to see what was the matter, and then the kittens would be saved. So Sport began at once. How he did bark! In less than two minutes, one of the men came running toward them. It was the farmer himself. He thought from the great noise Sport was making that the dog must have found a family of wood-chucks, and so when he caught sight of the kittens he began to laugh. But then he took a long pole, and very slowly and carefully pulled the kittens ashore. Then, he picked them up in his arms, and carried them toward the barn, while the old cat and Sport walked on behind. That night, the old cat asked her kittens what or who had saved their lives that day. "And we must n't count you?" said two or three in one breath. A smile lit up the face of the happy mother as her little ones said this, but she only said, quietly: "No; you need n't count me." "We owe a great deal to Sport," said their mother; "but most of all to the fact that you have always tried to be polite and kind to every one about you. Sport would never have come to save you if you had been cross, ugly kittens, and I hope you will always remember the lesson of this day, will you?" "I will," said the one white-pawed black kitten. "I will," said the all-over black kitten. "We will remember," said the two that looked just alike. "I will re-mem-b" began the little gray kitten, but before she could finish the sentence she was sound asleep! FIFTEEN FEET AND THEIR OWNERS. Он, Oh, Oh! where did all those letters come from? letters by hundreds, by thousands-letters by quarts, by bushels, by heaps and hills. The dear Little School-ma'am says she never before saw so many letters at once; and they all are addressed to Deacon Green in response to his message last month: FIFTEEN OWNERS WANTED. The little lady says he has been reading them from morning till night, day after day, but he has not yet been able to examine all that have come. Aha! here is the Deacon himself, with his hands and pockets full of letters. His face is glowing with happy pride, and he says: "Thank the youngsters for me, friend Jack, and tell them they shall hear from me next month." AN APPLE TREE INDEED. SO FAR, it seems that not one of my chicks has been able to tell me, from personal observation, of the very, very oldest apple-tree; but here is something from a fourteen-year-old English boy: "In answer to your question as to the oldestknown apple-tree, allow me, dear Jack," he writes, "to send you the following account of a very noble tree, and an American apple-tree to boot. It was printed in last February's issue of Young England": On the land of an old gentleman named Hotchkiss, living at Cheshire, Connecticut, is an apple-tree supposed to be, at the present time, no less than 186 years old. It is said to be the last of an orchard planted by the first settlers in that neighborhood. Mr. Hotchkiss is over eighty years of age, and he has known and owned this tree for nearly half a century. Some time ago, he informed a gentleman that, when he was a boy, he heard his grandmother say that she used to play in her early childhood under its then broad and sheltering branches. The body of the tree is four feet in diameter up to the point where the limbs branch out. There are five main branches, each of which is nearly two feet in diameter. Its height is sixty feet, and from its outermost branches, apples falling perpendicularly lie upon the ground thirty-three yards apart! Mr. Hotchkiss said that he had picked up and measured one hundred and twenty-five bushels of good sound apples out of one year's product of this tree, and he estimates that it has borne from ten to twelve thousand bushels from the date of its being planted up to the present time. Well, I am astonished! Ten to twelve thousand bushels of fruit, and to think that all of these once were green apples! Enough, the Deacon remarks, to double up half the boys of the United Kingdom, to say nothing of the Dominion of Canada and all the colonies. If such apple-trees would sing many a dirge before the close of sumgrew in my meadows I fear the happy crickets mer; not that crickets care for apples, but they do like boys and girls. THOUSANDS FOR ONE GOWN. How many silk-worms, do you suppose, are required to make one pound of silk? According to my most learned birds, and you may be sure that they three thousand silk-worms. And now, if you wish know what they are talking about, it takes almost to find out how far a pound of silk goes toward making one of you little girls a nice silk gown for Sundays, you can have some yards of honest dresssilk weighed, and so discover the matter for yourselves at the rate of three thousand cocoons to the pound. SOME PEOPLE'S QUEER NOTIONS. THE wearing of jewels of gold and silver began with savages, who could think of no more secure way of keeping their valuables than hanging them in their ears, noses, lips, cheeks, or around their necks or arms. After a while they seemed to forget that security had been the object in thus disfiguring themselves, and from being pleased at seeing their treasures so conspicuously and safely displayed, they actually began to fancy that the effect not only pleased every one else, but that they themselves presented a very attractive appearance. Think of a person being attractive with a hole in the end of the nose and a gold ring hanging there! Or with the cheek pierced by a large pin! I am told that not only savages, but persons who call themselves civilized, actually pierce holes in their own ears and hang gold and jewels through them! This, however, seems too strange to believe, and I'd thank you all to look sharply at the cars of * Jack-in-the-Pulpit, ST. NICHOLAS, May, 1884. any civilized person you may meet, and tell your Jack whether the strange story is true or not. Of one thing I am sure: the dear Little Schoolma'am, bless her! and Deacon Green are quite civilized, and they do not hang jewels from their ears. At all events, very odd things are done by mortals to aid or improve upon nature, and some of these things, the Little School-ma'am says, are as horrid as they are odd; while others, she maintains, are full of a grace and poetry which please the eye and delight the imagination. Japanese maidens, who are pretty enough naturally, I am told, daub their faces liberally with red and white paint, and put a dab of bronze on the lips. Chinamen sometimes allow their finger-nails to grow as long as six inches. Chinese girls glory in deformed feet. A tribe of South American Indians bore a hole in the lower lip and force in there a wooden plug larger than a silver dollar, making the lip look like a shelf! Can it be true that all over the world men and women are busy disfiguring themselves in the hope of looking handsome? BUTTERFLY HEAD-DRESSES. A GOOD friend of ST. NICHOLAS, Mr. John R. Coryell, wrote to your Jack, about these same queer notions of people who, to put it mildly, choose to make themselves objects of pity, for beauty's sake, and now he asks me to tell you some pleasanter facts concerning persons who wish to ornament themselves, and yet are not quite ready to bore holes through their flesh in order to shine in society. For instance, he says there are Cuban women who fasten huge fire-flies in their hair, and let them shine there like stars taken from the sky. This is a beautiful idea, and the fire-fly does not seem to object, for when released, it flies home as if it had a good store of adventures to relate to its waiting friends. There are many other such graceful fancies, he says, but of them all, none is so fantastically beautiful as that in vogue among the Darnley Islanders, who, in truth, are the last persons one would suspect of any such thing. They live on an island in Torres Straits, between New Guinea and Australia, and are not only ugly looking, but are more than suspected of being cannibals. On Darnley Island, it appears, there is a kind of very large and most beautiful butterfly called Papilio poseidon. It is marked in brown, black, and bright-red colors, and measures seven inches across the wings. This gorgeous creature is captured by the Islanders bent on decoration; a tough but delicate vegetable fiber, in lieu of a thread of cotton, is tied about its large body, and the end of the fiber secured in the man's hair. A halfdozen butterflies will be tethered in this way to the man, and as they soon become reconciled to cap tivity, their graceful flutterings about the unhandsome head of the man produce an effect difficult to describe and hardly to be imagined. THOSE PET BEETLES. THESE Darnley Islanders with their living head ornaments remind me of pet beetles. You all remember the picture which your Jack showed you last winter, in which a lady was decorated with a living beetle, tethered to her dress and doing his best to act the part of a jewel. A little New Yorker, Grace I. S., now sends a message to you about "Last summer,' "her letter says, similar insects. "my sister had three brown beetles from Cuba A BUTTERFLY HEAD-DRESS. given her, looking like those once pictured in ST. NICHOLAS." After dark she would take them out of the box, give them a bath, when they would show bright spots like eyes on the forehead, and a broad band of fire under the wings, making the water a lovely greenish yellow. She fed them with sugar and water, then let them run over the carpet. They trotted like little slowing trains of cars showing bright head-lights. ILLUMINATED FROGS. MARIETTA, OHIO, March 31, 1885. DEAR JACK: The illuminated frog or toad described in a recent number of ST. NICHOLAS is not new to me. If any of your readers who live in the region of fire-flies will catch a toad and put him under a glass and feed him with fire-flies, they will soon have a luminous frog. One evening, two or three years ago, I gave a few live fire-flies to a frog for the benefit of a cousin of mine who never had seen a fire fly. It afforded much amusement to us, though I fear it was poor fun for the fire-flies. But they had a gay time after they were swallowed, if one could judge by the sudden way in which the frog was lighted up from the inside. In this way you can have an illuminated frog as long as the arimal's appetite lasts. Hoping for the continued success of ST NICHOLAS, CHAS. HALL. EDITORIAL NOTES. CONTRIBUTORS are respectfully informed that, between the 1st of June and the 15th of September, manuscripts can not conveniently be examined at the office of ST. NICHOLAS. Consequently, those who desire to favor the magazine with contributions will please postpone sending their MSS. until after the last-named date. WE are indebted to Mr. Samuel W. Pennypacker, of Philadelphia, for permission to copy two of the illuminations, or "reward-cards," in his collection, as illustrations to Dr. Eggleston's article in this number on "A School of Long Ago." Mr. Pennypacker has also kindly furnished the following translation in verse of the curious inscription which appears in the engraving on page 644: Who is humble when successful, He unharmed can have fate grieve him, For the great and for the small things. If he meet with sore affliction, Having no man's benediction, Needing much commiseration, Patience is his consolation. If he far aloft is lifted, Humbleness can all things cower; Patience has the greatest power; Patience saves from every sorrow; Pride humility should borrow. Patience is for time of mourning; Humbleness when fate is scorning; Sweet Humility assures us; Patience from our ills secures us. Both these virtues then I cherish,Without either would I perish; Much of comfort have they for me, Rest and quiet they restore me. Our readers will be interested in the letters written by George Washington and Richard Henry Lee, while boys, which are to be found on page 685 of this number. They originally appeared in a volume entitled "Mt. Vernon, the Home of Washington," by Benson J. Lossing, published in this country by Messrs. John C. Yorston & Co., of Cincinnati, and in England by Messrs. Ward, Locke & Co., London. Our thanks are due to those publishers for permission to reprint the letters in ST. NICHOLAS. THE LETTER-BOX. FLORENCE, ITALY. DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: A very dear aunt of ours in America kindly sends us your interesting magazine every month, for we live in Italy, where there are no English magazines published, so far as we know. I have a little brother and sister here, and a sister and a brother in heaven. Our parents are Americans, but we were all born in Florence and have never seen America. We hope, however, to go there before long, as we have a grandfather, grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, whom we long to see. We live in a very pleasant part of the city and have beautiful views in every direction. We are right in front of a large square with a pretty fountain in the center, and I can see from our windows the great cathedral, or " Duomo," so much admired, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Campanile, and a large part of the Viale dei Colli, which is considered one of the most beautiful drives in Europe. From the back of our house we can see Fiesole, which is called "the Mother of Florence," and many little villages. We have plants, flowers, goldfishes, birds, two doves, and a little one, two and a half days old, besides a little kitten that we took to catch mice. FLORENCE L. H. No. EASTON, MASS. DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: Perhaps you would like to hear how highly favored the children of this town (Easton) are. A rich man residing here has had the S. NICHOLAS sent free into every family from which a child attends any of our public schools. The rich and poor are all used alike; and when the mail arrives which brings this bright and pretty book, you will see the children in crowds waiting anxiously around the post-office to receive the magazine so kindly given them. Or in the evening, if you should go into any house in town, you would find the little ones gathered around the table looking at the pretty pictures or reading the stories it contains. I do not believe there is another town in the country so blessed in this way. L. LAKE GEORGE. DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am a little girl, eight years old, and I have a dear, good grandma, three sisters, and two little brothers. My oldest sister has a pony and a dog. We have two peacocks. They have no name, but my little brother calls them Jenny and Rose. Our house is called Sunnyside. My little sister has two dolls. Their names are Bell and Dinah. One morning our man killed a big hedgehog, which was covered with quills two or three inches long. We have a farm-house, and an apple-orchard, to which we like to row over and get the apples. I hope you will print this for me, as it is the first letter I have written to you, and I like the ST. NICHOLAS very much. Your little reader, EDITH K. PROVIDENCE, R. I. DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am a little girl eleven years old. My sister and I collect worms, moths, and butterflies; it is great fun, Í think. We find the worms and put them under wire cases on strawberry boxes, which we fill with earth and leaves, while with others we only put leaves. We have a net each, and one or two extra, so if any friends make us a visit and want to hunt butterflies with us they can. We go to Wickford in the summer; there are a great many butterflies at Wickford, and so we get a good many. We have collected more than a year and enjoy it very much. The |
