were of so little use at home as to be willing to break our hearts by risking the loss of your life? What if I had come home to-night and found no Maidie to meet me?"

8. And Maidie started up and threw her arms about her father, touched to the heart by her sudden feeling of what his grief might have been. "I want you never to forget, little daughter," he went on, "that you are of great and important use in the family. Are you not my little comforter?

"How are all these children to grow up without the example and the care of their eldest sister? Our duties all begin at home. Heroic actions are great and admirable. But there are other actions just as admirable.

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Among these are the daily acts of duty done, with which you make life pleasant and easy for your mother and me, for Tom, for Kitten, and for all of us. When I remember that I never saw my Maidie out of temper my life

in

9. "Nor heard her speak rudely to any one," interrupted the listening Bessy.

"Nor knew of her telling anything but the truth," cried Tom from the other room.

"Nor heard her say 'I can't' when you ask her to tie your ribbons or to do your sum or to find your needle," added Fanny.

"Nor knew her to do anything but to try to make everybody. about her happy and keep her own sweet soul white in the eyes of Heaven," continued her father. "When I remember this of Maidie, I think all this daily service is of as much worth as the one heroic deed that risks life to save the lives of others."

DOWN TO SLEEP.

BY HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

NOVEMBER woods are bare and still;
November days are clear and bright;
Each noon burns up the morning chill;
The morning snow is gone by night;
Each day my steps grow slow, grow light,
As through the woods I reverent creep,
Watching all things lie "down to sleep."

I never knew before what beds,

Fragrant to smell, and soft to touch,
The forest sifts and shapes and spreads;
I never knew before how much

Of human sounds there is in such
Low tones as through the forest sweep
When all wild things lie "down to sleep."

Each day I find new coverlids

Tucked in and more sweet eyes shut tight; Sometimes the viewless mother bids

Her ferns kneel down, full in my sight; I hear their chorus of "good-night." And half I smile, and half I weep,

Listening while they lie "down to sleep."

November woods are bare and still;
November days are bright and good;

Life's noon burns up life's morning chill;
Life's night rests feet which long have stood;
Some warm, soft bed, in field or wood,

The mother will not fail to keep,

Where we can lay us "down to sleep."

THE SHIPWRECK.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

From "David Copperfield."

THIS is a selection from Chapter LV of "David Copperfield," Dickens' masterpiece. This chapter contains the famous description of a great storm at Yarmouth. Ham Peggotty, one of the noblest characters in Dickens, attempts to reach the wreck and loses his life. Other parts of this chapter should be read to the pupil in connection with this brief extract.

1. I PUT up at an old inn at Yarmouth and went down to look at the sea, staggering along the street which was strewn with sand and seaweed and with flying blotches of sea foam, afraid of falling slates and tiles and holding by people I met at angry corners.

Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town lurking behind buildings; some now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety.

2. Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads as they looked from water to sky and muttering to one another. Even stout mariners, disturbed and anxious, leveled their glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high, watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would ingulf the town.

As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out a deep cave in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some whiteheaded billows thundered on and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster.

3. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary stormbird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of