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ated bedstead lay an old manwho seemed to be at death's door; his eyes were sunk, his breathhurried, his lips trembling. By the side of his bed stood an earthenlamp upon a fragment of brick taken from the ruins of the house. In itthe oil was deficient; so also was it in the body of the man. Anotherlamp shone by the bedside--a girl of faultlessly fair face, of soft,starry beauty.Whether because the light from the oil-less lamp was dim, or becausethe two occupants of the house were absorbed in

used himself in the many long days during which he was confined to the house by ill health.It is at this stage the steam and kettle story takes its rise. Mrs. Campbell, Watt's cousin and constant companion, recounts, in her memoranda, written in 1798: Sitting one evening with his aunt, Mrs. Muirhead, at the tea-table, she said: James Watt, I never saw such an idle boy; take a book or employ yourself usefully; for the last hour you have not spoken one word, but taken off the lid of that kettle

west? He often asked himself that question in some amusement as they approached the coast of China. They entered a long winding channel and steamed this way and that until one day they sailed into a fine broad harbor with a magnificent city rising far up the steep sides of a hill. It was an Oriental city, and therefore strange to the young traveller. But for all that there seemed something familiar in the fine European buildings that lined the streets, and something still more homelike in that

one about some very frightening and mysterious happenings in a modest suburban house on Long Island, and the other about excellence. I now have reason to hope that she has been reading Emerson, and she probably has. She is not a shirker, but, at least usually, as much a person of serious intent as one should be at her age and in her condition. Her understanding of Emerson is not perfect, but neither is mine. The essay she has been reading, I have read many times, and every time with the

know, I know! That will do-o-o, that will do-o-o! cooed theWood-Pigeon obstinately in her soft, foolish little voice, withoutpaying the least attention to Mother Magpie's directions.We all know that--anything more? chirped the chorus of birds, tryingto conceal how anxious they were to know what came next, for the nestswere only half finished. But Mother Magpie was thoroughly disgusted, and refused to go on withthe lesson which had been so rudely interrupted by her pupils. You are all so wise,