presents in bread and milk and such kinds of things, which a mistress has always under her hand, and which she gives without looking too close. Also, rarely one churned butter without saying to him, "Hansli, we beat butter to-morrow; 5 you like to bring a pot, you shall have some."

if

And as for fruit, he had more than he could eat of it; so that it could not fail, things going on in this way, that Hans should prosper, besides being thoroughly economical. If he spent as much 10 as a threepenny piece on the day he went to the town, it was the end of the world. In the morning his mother took care he had a good breakfast, after which he took also something in his pocket, without counting that sometimes here and some- 15 times there one gave him a morsel in the kitchens where he was well known; and finally he did n't imagine that he ought always to have something to eat the moment he had a mind to it.

sorcery: witchcraft.

quintal: a weight of one hundred

pounds.

10

EVOLUTION

JOHN BANISTER TABB

), an American poet, was During the Civil War he He was captured and with

JOHN BANISTER TABB (1845born in Amelia County, Virginia. served on a blockade-running ship. Sidney Lanier spent some time as a prisoner in Point Lookout. 5 In 1884, after his ordination as a priest, he was appointed professor of English in St. Charles College, in Ellicott City, Maryland.

15

Father Tabb, as he is usually called, is the author of four or five very attractive volumes of verse. He has been especially happy in lyric verse.

Out of the dusk a shadow,

Then, a spark;

Out of the cloud a silence,

Then, a lark;

Out of the heart a rapture,
Then, a pain;

Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.

LITTLE GAVROCHE

VICTOR HUGO

VICTOR HUGO (1802-1885), a celebrated French poet and novelist, was the son of a French general. The bright boy was educated in Paris, in Italy, and in Spain where his father was stationed.

In his fifteenth year he competed for a prize offered by the 5 French Academy. The Immortals, as the members of the Academy were called, could hardly be brought to believe that a boy had written the verses sent in by Hugo. The great writer, Chateaubriand, spoke of him as "The Sublime Boy."

Two years later, in a poem remarkable for so young a poet, he 10 won a laurel crown in the Floral Games of Toulouse. In his twentieth year his Odes and Ballads gave him a leading place among the younger poets of France. King Louis the Eighteenth admired his genius so much that he conferred on him a pension of fifteen hundred francs.

15

Hugo became a leader in the new school of French poets, and his poems, romances, and dramas went far towards giving his followers the victory over their rivals. As he grew in fame he was elected to membership in the Academy and also made a peer; but when Louis Bonaparte overthrew the government Hugo was 20 banished from France and a price placed on his head.

From his place of exile in the island of Guernsey he sent book after book to France to be published. Among these was his world-renowned novel, Les Misérables.

After the French were defeated at Sedan, Hugo returned to 25 France. He spent an honored old age in his beloved Paris. On his eightieth birthday a multitude of his admirers gave him a great ceremonial banquet. Hugo was always devoted to children, and a part of the ceremony of this occasion included a long procession of beautifully dressed children who sang songs from the 30 aged poet's poems.

The greatest writer whom the world has seen since Shakespeare.SwINBURNE.

It is no small distinction to have guided a people's hope for eighteen years from his place of exile. It is a noble end of a 5 zealous life to have worn for fifteen years the crown of a nation's

literary kingship. But when these proud honors are forgotten, children's voices will still repeat and men's hearts echo a hundred songs of the greatest lyric poet of France. — HARPER.

Spring in Paris is often accompanied with keen 10 and sharp north winds, by which one is not exactly frozen, but frost-bitten; these winds, which mar the most beautiful days, have precisely the effect of those currents of cold air which enter a warm room through the cracks of an ill-closed window 15 or door. It seems as if the dreary door of winter were partly open and the wind were coming in at it.

One evening when these winds were blowing harshly, and the citizens had resumed their cloaks, little Gavroche, always shivering cheerfully under 20 his rags, was standing, as if in ecstasy, before a

wig maker's shop. He was adorned with a woman's woolen shawl, picked up nobody knows where, of which he had made a muffler. Little Gavroche appeared to be intensely admiring a wax bride, 25 with bare neck and a headdress of orange flowers, which was revolving behind the sash, exhibiting, between two lamps, its smile to the passers.

As he was contemplating the bride he muttered between his teeth: "Tuesday. It is n't Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Perhaps it is Tuesday. Yes, it is Tuesday."

Nobody ever discovered to what this monologue 5 related. If, perchance, it referred to the last time he had dined, it was three days before, for it was then Friday.

While Gavroche was examining the bride and the windows, two children of unequal height, 10 rather neatly dressed, and still smaller than he, one appearing to be seven years old, the other five, timidly turned the knob of the door and entered the shop, asking for something, charity, perhaps, in a plaintive manner which rather re- 15 sembled a groan than a prayer. They both spoke at once, and their words were unintelligible because sobs choked the voice of the younger, and the cold made the elder's teeth chatter. The barber turned with a furious face, and, without leaving his razor, 20 crowding back the elder with his left hand and the little one with his knee, pushed them into the street and shut the door, saying, "Coming and freezing people for nothing!"

The two children went on, crying. Meanwhile 25 a cloud had come up; it began to rain.