90 "ONLY GIVE ME AN EDUCATION.” "This may be very well for you, Robert, and for the learned men you have told me about. But I like my way best. You follow your course and I will follow mine, and we will see in a few years which of us is the most intelligent." With this the boys parted. Charles, through the whole course of his education, skimmed over the surfaces of things, and the result was he knew a little of a great many subjects, but was not thoroughly conversant with any. He had read a great many books, but made the contents of no one of them perfectly his own. He could read a little in French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek, but he did not feel at home in either language. On the contrary, Robert, though his acquirements were less showy than those of Charles, was by far the most learned man. Both became lawyers. Robert carried the same spirit of patient investigation into his profession that had characterized him as a schoolboy. He studied carefully every case that was committed to him, and made himself perfectly familiar with all its bearings. But Charles, trusting to his intuitions rather than to his knowledge of the facts or of the law, frequently arrived at false conclusions. While Robert by slow but steady progress attained to the very front rank of his profession, Charles, though he sometimes made a brilliant effort, and astonished his friends by his flashes of genius, never rose higherthan a second-rate lawyer. "ONLY GIVE ME AN EDUCATION." BY VESTA VIOLET. REUBEN," said Farmer Hadley one morning to his son, “I sup pose you expect to have that colt of Old Dobbin's as yours, don't you, as I gave the other one to Levi ?" 66 'Well, I don't care much about it," said Reuben, "I had rather have the privilege of going to school, and then, with my horse money, have a library. I had rather have a few volumes of choice reading than all the horses in the universe, if that was to be my only portion." His father looked astonished at this reply, and answered somewhat gruffly: "What on earth do you want to go to school any longer for? You know how to read and write now, and that is enough. I should "ONLY GIVE ME AN EDUCATION." 91 like to know, too, what you want to do with so many books? I see plainly you never mean to be good for any thing." I can "I tell you, father, I mean to be a great and good man. earn my own living, too; only give me an education, and you will see that I shall not have invested my capital foolishly." Farmer Hadley was one of those cold, calculating, money-loving men, whose one idea is to get money. As soon as he began to think over the matter, and think Reuben might gain wealth by his learning, he concluded to gratify him, for, thought he, "I see he is always possessed to have a book in his hand, and he never will be good for any thing on the farm." So he was sent to school, and from thence to college; subsequently followed school-teaching a while, and then became a minister of the gospel, and is now employed by the Home Missionary Board to preach in one of the Western Territories; and Farmer Hadley, in spite of his prejudice against books and book learning, feels proud of his son Reuben, and when he gets the warm, full letter of what his son is doing, the tears will roll down his withered cheeks, and he blesses God that he ever gave him so noble a boy. Alas! for Levi. His choice was a different one; he did not love his school nor books. He commenced early to trade; at school he would trade knives, and toys, and tell stories in order to make good bargains. His mind was on every thing but learning. He rejoiced over the colt that his father gave him; but no sooner did he have the control of it than he traded it away, and traded again and again, till finally he sold out to one of his worthless companions, who ran away and never paid him for it. Thus his treasure was gone. If it had been an education, he could not have lost it so easily. Soon after this he married, and commenced life for himself. His father gave him five hundred dollars to start with, and as he was always a hard worker, and quick, he hoped he would do well. But he had formed habits that kept constantly undermining his little means, and he found that his purse leaked out all that it accumulated, and he was obliged to get in debt. He still loved to frequent places where the idle, vicious, and intemperate meet to waste their precious moments. And here, after toiling hard all day, he would spend his evenings, leaving his wife lonely and cheerless at home, wondering where he staid so long. These habits grew upon him; he loves the drink that intoxicates, and often comes home reeling. His money Which of these would my little readers is wasted, and what is he? choose to follow? 92 A CHASE WITH THE BREEZE. A CHASE WITH THE BREEZE BY MRS. E. M. GUTHRIE. Он dance away, dance away, musical Breeze, I know by your breath you've been searching my bower, Dash open my books now, and search every leaf; And dance away, dance away, musical Breeze! But don't make so light of grave things, if you please. Now wait, saucy Breeze, till I comb up my hair ROCKTON, ILL. THE mind has more room in it than most people think, if they would but furnish the apartments. SEEDS AND SAND. 93 Microscopic Views.-Xo. 3. SEEDS AND SAND. BY UNCLE GEORGE. ROM the damp grounds about the spring, Willie has brought us some rushes, with pine-like leaves radiating, as the spokes of a wheel, from the stem, which is grooved like a fluted column. This rush is known commonly as the Horsetail.' It is in bloom now, or what you may call its blossom, for seed and blossom seem to be the same thing with it. Willie, just shake your horsetail plume over this glass slide, and we will see what follows-there, I will throw the sunlight pretty strong on the object; what do you see?" "See! why, why! heap." Ten thousand spiders all fighting in one "You start in a way to justify your extravagant statement. Jennie, try your sober fancy at a description." "Indeed, Willie's notion is not very wide of the mark, as it seems to me. The convulsive action of the several long threads attached to the seeds, twisting and untwisting, makes an appearance very like life." "Oh, how they writhe! What are they all, Uncle George?" "Don't be alarmed, Fanny; they are only the seeds of this rasplike rush; and those long fibers, I presume, are a contrivance of Nature to get them scattered. They coil about one another, and whatever they come in contact with, and the seeds are thus carried to their destined places. What has my little friend Johnny in his hands ?" "Some brakes, uncle, that have strange little eggs all about the side of the leaves. See, there are two rows of them set right along against the veins of the leaf." "Eggs, Johnny? And you've gone and broke up the nest!" "No, Willie, the nest was a brake itself; but I wonder what sort of creature laid its eggs upon the bottom of a leaf! Will you please to put them on the glass? maybe they'll look curious." “Ho, Fanny, if you wish to see how a little egg will look magnified, you can look at a goose-egg." "Not so fast, Willie; there are many very curiously shaped eggs, round, and oval, and fluted, and flower-carved, and even square; so a goose's egg will hardly pass for the magnified type of all eggs. But these are not eggs on the fern leaf; they are its natural seed, and quite curious, as you will see." "Curious enough, I should think, for seeds to grow on the leaf; and, oh, how very funny they are! why, they are school globes, with a meridian circle all marked off into degrees, only I don't see any figures to number them.” "And how do you find them, Johnny? Ha, what makes you start so?" "I could'nt help it, Uncle George; there was a great ball tied round with a big stout rope in there, and when the sunshine struck it, it burst right open for all it was tied so tight." "Well, boy, look again, if you can get one eye shut after opening both so wide." "Ah, yes, and there it is in two beautiful cups, one above the other, and every thing is spilled out of the upper one. What is it?" "The seed-cup of the fern is divided into two hemispheres, each fast to the jointed-looking band which surrounds them; when fully ripe, the globe bursts open, and scatters its seed broadcast. It is one of Nature's spring-guns, very curiously adapted to its purpose. I will increase the power of the microscope by this added lens, and let you see that fine dust which escaped from the exploded globe." "And these are cups too, only see! these tops are scalloped like the profile of a flower with eight petals. How very curious and beautiful! The smallest particle seems organized into regular and beautiful forms. Can you show us the strange-shaped eggs you spoke of, Uncle George ?” "Not till we find them, Jennie. If you keep a sharp look-out on the butterflies and millers and moths that flit about the grass, you may discover the lodging-place of some of the variegated forms of their eggs. Till then, let us amuse ourselves with what offers, and first with this little pinch of yellow sand from the seashore." "Sand! that can hardly have any thing so fine as we have seen." "There is no judging by the looks of what the dullest earth may contain; perhaps, like the character of a homely genius, the right kind of eyes will find this sand brilliant with a thousand glories." "Brilliant indeed! Ah, how the duil dust cheated me! Here are diamond and emeralds and topaz stones, and the most perfect and polished shells I ever saw; look, Willie! the jeweled trees of the Arabian nights were not so rich." |