of a ship." Make the class feel how safe, and how fortunate we are to have helpers all around us and comrades everywhere.

Read: Rudyard Kipling's "The Ship that Found Herself," in The Day's Work. It will require preparation to get the best out of this story, for it has many technical nautical terms, but it is well worth study. Its motive is the value of working together and doing each his part without complaint or shirking. At first, the different bolts, rivets, and planks in the ship complain of one another and of the hardships they meet in the surging waves. Gradually, they discover that they must all pull together, all share the strain, and all work for the ship, and they arrive in port triumphant.

THE RISKS OF A FIREMAN'S LIFE1

When we see a fire company dashing on its way in answer to an alarm, we stop to admire the stirring picture that it presents. Then we pass on our way, and in the whirl of city life this incident is soon forgotten. And yet this company may return with many of its members bruised and sore, while others are perhaps conveyed to near-by hospitals, mortally wounded. It is not always the fire that makes the biggest show that is the hardest to fight. The fire that goes roaring through the roof of a building, lighting up the city for miles around, is sometimes much more easily subdued than the dull, smoky cellar or sub-cellar fire that forces the men to face the severest kind of "punishment," the effects of which are felt for weeks afterward, before it is controlled.

1 From Fighting a Fire, by Charles T. Hill. Copyright, 1894, 1896, 1897, by The Century Co.

At a sub-cellar fire that occurred one night, a few years ago, on lower Broadway, I saw over a dozen men laid out on the sidewalk, overcome by the smoke. A gruesome sight it was, too, with the dim figures of the ambulance surgeons, lanterns in hand, working over them, and the thick smoke for a background.

These were brave fellows, who had dashed in with the lines of hose, only to be dragged out afterward by their comrades, nearly suffocated by the thick, stifling smoke that poured in volumes from every opening in the basement. Over one hundred and fifty feet of "deadlights," or grating, over the sidewalk had to be broken in that night before the cellars were relieved sufficiently of the smoke with which they were charged to allow the men to go in and extinguish the fire. This required the combined work of the crews of five hook-and-ladder companies, who broke in the ironwork with the butt ends of their axes, the hardest kind of work. But the newspapers the following morning gave this fire only a ten or twelve line notice, mentioning the location and the estimated loss, and adding that "it was a severe fire to subdue." No word of the suffering the men were forced to face before this fire was under control; no mention of the dash after dash into the cellar with the heavy line of hose, only to be driven back to the street by the smoke, or to be dragged out afterward nearly unconscious; nor of the thud after thud with the heavy axes on the thick iron grating that required twenty or thirty blows before any impression could be made on it. This was muscle-straining, lung-taxing work that the average man has to face only once in a life-time; but the firemen in a large city have it always before them; and each tap on the telegraph, may mean the signal to summon them to a task that requires the utmost strength and nerve.

While speaking of cellar fires, let me relate an incident

that happened to some companies in the down-town district. It was in the sub-cellar of a crockery and glass warehouse, amid the straw used to pack the glassware. It sent forth a dense, stifling smoke, and was an ugly fire to fight. I will relate it in the way in which it was told me by a fireman in one of the companies that were summoned to subdue it.

“The station came in one night at 11.30. We rolled, and found the fire in Barclay street, in a crockery warehouse, burning straw, jute, excelsior, and all that sort of stuff in the sub-cellar. Smoke? I never saw such smoke since I've been in the business. We went through the building, and found the fire had n't got above the cellar. We tried to get the line down the cellar stairs, but it was no use. No one could live on that stairway for a minute. The chief then divided us up, sent out a second [a second alarm], and we sailed in to drown it out; 27 engine got the rear; 7 engine the stairway, to keep it from coming up; and our company, 29, got the front. We pried open the iron cellar doors on the pavement, only to find that the elevator, used to carry freight to the bottom, had been run up to the top. Here were four inches of Georgia pine to cut through! And phew! such work in such smoke! Well, we got through this, opened it up, and-out it all came! No flames, just smoke, and with force to suffocate a man in a second. We backed out to the gutter and got a little fresh air in our lungs, and went at it again. We brought a thirty-five foot ladder over from the truck and lowered it through this opening, and found we could n't touch bottom. A fortyfive foot ladder was put down, and only three rungs remained above the sidewalk; this showed that there was over forty feet of cellar and sub-cellar! And down to this place we had to go with the line. Well, the sooner we got at it the sooner it was over, so, shifting the line over the top rung of the ladder, so it would n't get

caught, down we started. It was only forty feet, but I can tell you seemed like three hundred and forty before we got to the bottom. Of course, when we got there it was n't so bad; the smoke lifted, and gave us a corner in the cellar shaft where we could work, and we soon drove the fire away to the rear and out; but going down we got a dose of smoke we'll all remember to our last days."

It is not alone in saving lives from fire that the firemen show of what heroic stuff they are made; in the simple discharge of their daily duty they are often forced to risk life over and over again in deeds of daring about which we hear little, deeds that are repeated at almost every serious fire to which they are called.

OCTOBER: PERSEVERANCE

Learn: Arthur H. Clough's "Say not, The Struggle Nought Availeth." Read James Russell Lowell's "Columbus," and Joaquin Miller's "Columbus."

Help the class to realize what penetrating vision and faith it took to carry through the great project of Columbus. In the poem by Miller, bring out the courage we all need to "sail on!"

Tell stories of Henry Hudson, of Lewis and Clark, and of Champlain.

Read the account of the giving of the Ten Commandments (Exodus, Chap. xx). Associate them with the national birth of the Hebrews. A nation to become strong and to endure must have laws that help all lawabiding people.

Questions: Why do we need any laws? Why are laws called sacred? Ought we to obey inconvenient laws? Why? Why do we have rules in games? Are

punishments needed? Why? Why are honesty and truth essential to any people living together?

Give a detailed and graphic account of General Charles G. Gordon. It would be valuable to spend several weeks in learning to know this hero.

Consult: Gordon's Chinese Campaign, by Andrew Wilson; Story of Chinese Gordon, by A. E. Hake; Colonel Gordon in Central Africa, by George Birbeck Hill; Journal of Gordon at Khartoum, by A. E. Hake; and Chinese Gordon, by Archibald Forbes.

THE STORY OF GENERAL GORDON

General Gordon was born in England, January 28, 1833, and was one of a military family. At the age of fourteen, he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and by the time he was twenty-one, he had his first fighting at Sebastopol during the Crimean War. There are three great experiences in Gordon's career: his command of the forces in China, his simple friendly life as engineer on the Thames, and his work in the Soudan.

In 1860, the real beginning of his fame was made. He joined the army at Pekin, China, and soon was promoted to be a major. In 1862, the Taiping tribes, under an extraordinary fanatic who claimed to be divine, devastated the south of China, destroying towns and even threatening the European factories and silk districts. The English and French forces agreed to help the Chinese imperial forces and defend Shanghai. They were aided by an army of foreigners and about a thousand natives under an American named Ward. The expenses of this army were paid by Chinese merchants. When Ward fell, Li Hung Chang