So, swinging my hammock from the heavy beams of the loft, I abandoned myself to the study in hand, feeling that for once many elements had joined themselves together to enhance my physical and spiritual comfort.

5

Here on the latest fringe of nature's geological formation, with all the newest discoveries of natural science at hand in the shape of books and memoranda, and with fishes, birds, reptiles, and mammals, water of sea, stream, and lake, woods, marshes, and swamps, with all the range 10 of plants growing in them, what more could I wish?

Abridged.

sea-island cotton: a superior cotton of long fiber, grown on the islands along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. ter'ebinth: turpentine. — counterpoint: melodious accompaniment.

THE MOCKING BIRD

SIDNEY LANIER

SIDNEY LANIER (la-neer') was an American poet whose work has a wonderful charm. In addition to his exquisite verse he wrote "The Boy's Froissart" and other books in prose. He was born in 1842 and died in 1881.

NOTE. In this beautiful sonnet is compressed a wealth of meaning 5 and suggestion. Note the third line and all that it contains. The poet calls the bird a Shakespeare, and the reason for it is given in the eighth line of the poem.

Superb and sole, upon a plumèd spray

That o'er the general leafage boldly grew,

He summed the woods in song; or typic drew
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay
Of languid doves when long their lovers stray,
And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew
At morn in brake or bosky avenue.

Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say.
Then down he shot, bounced airily along
The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song
Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again.
Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain :
How may the death of that dull insect be
The life of yon trim Shakespeare on the tree?

typ'ic representing something by a single instance or model. - bosk'y: woody or bushy.—to his art again: went back to his singing again. read me plain explain to me.

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10

15

20

10

ABOU BEN ADHEM

LEIGH HUNT

JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT (1784-1859) was an English poet and man of letters, who had great personal charm. Both his poetry and his prose are easy and graceful.

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

5 Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold;
And to the Presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?"-The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou.

66

Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.”

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

NOTE.

THE CONTENTED MAN

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

The following selection is from "Back-Log Studies."

I made his acquaintance last summer in the country, and I have not in a long time been so well pleased with any of our species. He was a man past middle life, with a large family. He had always been from boyhood of a contented 5 and placid mind, slow in his movements, slow in his speech. I think he never cherished a hard feeling toward anybody, nor envied any one, least of all the rich and prosperous, about whom he liked to talk. Indeed, his talk was a good deal about wealth, especially about his c cousin who had been down South and "got forehanded" within a few years.

He was genuinely pleased at his relation's good luck, and pointed him out to me with some pride. But he had no envy of him, and he evinced no desire to imitate him. 15 I inferred from all his conversation about "piling it up" (of which he spoke with a gleam of enthusiasm in his eye) that there were moments when he would like to be rich himself; but it was evident that he would never make the least effort to be so, and I doubt if he could even 20 overcome that delicious inertia of mind and body called laziness sufficiently to inherit.

Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar fascination for him, and I suspect he was a visionary in the midst of his poverty. Yet I suppose he had hardly the personal property which the law exempts from execution. He 5 had lived in a great many towns, moving from one to another with his growing family, by easy stages, and was always the poorest man in the town, and lived on the most niggardly of its rocky and bramble-grown farms, the productiveness of which he reduced to zero in a 10 couple of seasons by his careful neglect of culture.

The fences of his hired domain always fell into ruins under him, perhaps because he sat on them so much, and the hovels he occupied rotted down during his placid residence in them. He moved from desolation to desola15 tion, but carried always with him the equal mind of a philosopher. Not even the occasional tart remarks of his wife, about their nomadic life and his serenity in the midst of discomfort, could ruffle his smooth spirit.

He was a most worthy man, truthful, honest, tem20 perate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no bad habits, perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor did he lack the knack of the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or build a house, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this brief existence, worth 25 while to do any of these things.

He was an excellent angler, but he rarely fished; partly because of the shortness of days, partly on account of