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13. For there were pictures, many,

Of beast, and fish, and bird;

And thou wert there, thou good reindeer,
Of whom so much I'd heard.

14. And that great, heavy, ancient book
Was such a prize to me!

It told me of the monstrous whale,
And the small, good, honey bee;

15. It told me of the elephant,
The tiger, the gazelle,

Of the vast, luxuriant jungles,
And the lone, bright, desert well.

16. I read there of the Northern sea,
Where iceburg islands float,

And crush the great three-masted ship,
As 'twere a cockle boat.

17. I read about the harmless seals,
And the shaggy, polar bear,

And the mighty troops of hungry wolves
That roam and riot there.

18. I read of Nature's glorious works,
And wondering went on,
And found before me pleasures
Whose round will ne'er be done.

19. And in my good, old-fashioned book,
I read of herb and tree,

That were food for man, and beast, and bird
And for the honey bee.

20. I read of grove-like banyans, Of cedars, broad and tall, Of the lofty, towering palm,

And the moss and lichen small.

21. And then I found how wondrously poor reindeer was fed,

The

When over all his frozen land,

Deep winter's snow lay spread;

22. How God had bid the barren ground
Produce this strange, small thing,

On which whole countless herds of deer
Are ever pasturing.

23. How, in the woods of scattered pine,
Abundantly it grows,

And clothes the earth for many a mile
Beneath the trackless snows;

24. How the sagacious reindeer delves,
And scents his onward way,

Till he reaches his scant, mossy food,
That doth his toil repay.

25. O, see him with his master's sledge
How swift they glide along,
Like bird or fairy car I've read
Of, in some quaint old song.

26 Away! o'er the boundless snowy waste,
So glittering and bright;
Away! through the dark pine forest,
As gloomy as the night; –

27. Away! o'er the frozen lake,

The river, and the fen;

Away! away! Ye have winsome steeds,
Ye little Lapland men!

28. Ay, winsome steeds, in sooth,

With their antlers branched and high;

So sure of foot, and swift of pace,
They truly seem to fly.

29. And thus we find, in every clime,

Things beautiful and fair; Each fitted to fulfil its task of use and beauty there.

30. And I remember thinking so,
When, a little child, I read
The history of the good reindeer,
And the moss whereon they fed.

WISDOM.

CAN gold calm passion, or make reason shine?
Can we dig peace, or wisdom, from the mine?
Wisdom to gold prefer; for 'tis much less
To make our fortune, than our happiness.

PARALLAX.

1. THE steamboat was moving swiftly along, so as to plough up the water with much force; and Rollo saw, to his great delight, that the dashing waves were full of stars. They looked like sparks of fire, which came flying out on each side of the cutwater, and glided swiftly along past the bows. 2. "What makes them?" said Rollo.

"I don't know," replied Mr. Holiday.

"Why, father!" said Rollo, "don't you know?" 3. "No," replied his father. "I have heard it said, that they are produced by some kind of animalculæ in the water."

"What are animalculæ?" asked Rollo.

4. "The word animalculæ means small animals,” replied his father. "People say that these little stars are some kind of animalculæ ; but if they are, I don't understand why they don't shine, except when the water is agitated.

5. "You find that where the water is dashed away each side of the bows, and where it comes out from under the paddle wheels, we see these stars; but they do not shine where the water is still.”

6. After looking at these stars in the water for some time, Rollo and his father went back to their seats under the awning. Here Rollo's attention was attracted by the sight of a star, as he supposed, which was very near the horizon. He pointed it out to his father.

7. "Yes," said Mr. Holiday; "I noticed it before. It looks precisely like Sirius; but it is really a very different thing."

"What is it, sir?" said Rollo.

"It is a lighthouse, I presume,” replied his father. 8. "What makes you think it is a lighthouse?" asked Rollo.

"I judge from the distance that it is from us,” replied his father. "It cannot be more than a few miles off."

"How do you know? I could not tell, how far off it is, by the looks of it. It appears to me exactly like Širius."

9. "I cannot tell by the looks of it," said his father. "I do not see any difference myself between the appearance of the light and that of Sirius, unless one is a little brighter than the other."

"Then how can you tell how far off it is?" asked Rollo.

10. "By its parallax," replied his father. "Its parallax!" repeated Rollo.

parallax?"

"What is its

"Something too difficult for you to understand,"

replied his father.

11. "Can't I understand any thing about it at all?" said Rollo.

"Why, yes," rejoined his father; "I don't know that I cannot explain something to you about parallax; but it will not be much."

12. "Well, sir," said Rollo, "explain as much as you can."

"When we went to the bows of the boat to see the stars in the water, or rather the sparkles of water," said his father, "I observed that light off in this direction."

13. So saying, Rollo's father pointed to a part of the horizon, farther forward than where the light then was; and he explained to Rollo that, while they were gone to the bows of the boat, the light had glided along the horizon from that point to the place where it then was.

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14. "Now all this time," continued his father, we have been going along ourselves in a straight line."

"How do you know, sir?" asked Rollo.

15. "Because," replied his father, "Sirius appears in the same direction from us, that it did before we went away; and that shows, that we have not altered our course. But the light has moved along the horizon several degrees; so that it appears now in a very different direction from what it did before. And yet it has not moved itself; it only changes its direction because we

move."

16. "How do you know," asked Rollo, "that it does not move itself?"

"Why, I don't know what movable light could be there."

"There might be a man," replied Rollo, "carrying a lantern along the shore."

"But the light of a lantern could not be seen so far," rejoined his father.

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