offer a reward to any person who would restore me. So you need not talk any more about being worth the most.'

Just then the servant came for the umbrella, and took it into the kitchen. She opened it, and spread it before the fire to dry. The children were playing on the hearth, and had not room enough, now the umbrella was near the fire. Young Master Jack ran off to the front door, and took the sulky walking-stick out of the stand. With this he ran back to the kitchen, put the stick between his legs, and galloped round and round the room, pretending he was on a horse..

You may depend upon it they had fine fun. But all things have an end. As the servant went in to prepare her master's tea, she pushed the door against Master Jack, who broke his father's stick in trying to get out of the way. His little sister pushed the umbrella too near the fire, and the brown silk cover was soon in a blaze. As it burned, they all rushed to put it out at once. In so doing Tom fell upon it and broke the frame to pieces.

The doctor heard the noise, and came into the kitchen. His umbrella and walking-stick were past mending. So he told the servant to gather up the pieces and use them as firewood.

'Oh dear! dear!' said the umbrella, when they found themselves in the cold, damp cellar, 'I wish I hadn't talked so loud in the stand this evening. I might have been alive and well; but now my back and ribs are all broken. Oh dear! I shall die!'

'And I wish,' said the walking-stick, 'that I had never left the service of my former master; he would never have doomed me to die like this.'

I come to earth on the northern blast,

Which scatters the leaves away;
And over the forest a robe I fling,
Of a thousand colours gay.

I whiten the meadows with crusting dews,
And open the chestnut buds;

And throw a chill o'er the swimmer's limbs
Who would tempt the tossing floods.

I shake from the boughs the ripen'd fruit,
As the merry gath'rers come;

With laugh and with jest they gladly bear
The golden treasures home.

The nuts I fling from the highest twig,
Where the squirrel could scarcely climb;
And many a curious prank I play,
That cannot be told in rhyme.

I call for fire on the cottage hearth,
It blazes strong and clear;
The shivering children gather round,
And sit to the embers near.

I paint the school-boy's ruddy cheek
With a hue like the summer rose ;

He cries to his playmates, 'Jack Frost has come!'

Though the story each one knows.

I lay my finger on rosy buds,

That hang on the garden spray;

They shrink from my cold and cruel touch,
And quickly wither away.

Ye think I am rude, but a Power Divine
Hath sent me to earth once more;

To do His bidding I hasten on,
When the summer bloom is o'er.

Our picture represents a girl taking lessons on the tight-rope. She is dressed in gay and flimsy attire. Her feet are covered with peculiar kind of socks, to enable her to tread the rope firmly. The soles and the rope have been well rubbed with chalk, to prevent her from slipping.

She is learning to balance herself on the rope without a balancing pole. Poor child, she has had many a fall from the rope before she could stand alone. The old man you see standing by is her master. He has often punished her

because she did not learn her duties sooner; and often, when the people have clapped their hands with joy at her performances, she has had a sad heart because she has thought of her hard lot.

Few performers on the tight-rope can earn enough to keep themselves in comfort. Many of them meet with accidents, and often find refuge in the hospital. When we see their clever tricks on the rope, we do not think of the hardships of their life. Living in tents, these showmen wander about the country without any settled home. Their children are brought up in ignorance, and are very seldom put to learn any trade.

Some of the feats performed on the tight-rope require a great amount of practice. Before performing in public, they must be rehearsed again and again in private. The prince of tight-rope walkers is Blondin, who walked over a rope across the falls of Niagara, and carried a man on his back. Sometimes he walks on high ropes with his eyes blindfolded and his head in a sack. He wheels a barrow along the rope, sets up a cooking-stove, and cooks his food there. It is very wonderful to see what he can do. No doubt he has received large sums of money as the reward of his skill and perseverance, but the vocation is attended with great risk and danger. Where there is one, like Blondin, who finds the profession to be profitable, there are hundreds of others who find it to be a life of hardship and poverty.

Lucy May had the misfortune, whilst she was very young, to lose her mother. Her father was a poor labouring man, who found it impossible to earn bread enough to fill all the little mouths