as, indeed, the wisest people always do. One of the old conditions still remains the suitor must be a glazier; but there are two new conditions." No sooner did the young nobleman hear this than he went to the palace, disclosed himself to the King, and reminded his majesty that he had been " one of the royal pages, and that for love of the Princess he had become a glazier. Now he would like to marry her and reign himself after the King's death. The King sent for the Princess, and asked her if she liked the young nobleman. She said "yes," for she recognized him immediately; and when the King desired him to take off his gloves, so that he could see if he had shapely hands, the Princess said it was quite unnecessary, as she had remarked his fine hands the day he led her upstairs. So, both conditions being fulfilled, the young nobleman became her husband. As for the second Princess, she became an aunt—indeed, the very best aunt in the world, as everybody acknowledges. She taught the little Princesses to read and cut out dolls' clothes, and she examined the school reports of the little Princes. Whoever had a good report was praised and received a present; whoever had a, bad one, had his ears boxed. "What do you mean, you naughty Prince, by being such a lazy, good-fornothing?" she would begin. "What's to become of you? Out with itwell?" "K-k-king!" the offender would sob. King Midas, my dears, with the great long ears," she would say, grimly looking at the other little Princes, and then the culprit would be terribly ashamed of himself. The second Princess grew to be as old as the hills, though her heart was cracked; and when people wondered at this, she would say cheerfully, "Cracked articles always last the longest." "THE FIRST YEAR HE WASHED AND DRESSED THE CHILDREN.' "What are the new conditions?" the nobleman asked. "Firstly, he must please the Princess; secondly, he must have fine, shapely, unroughened hands. Should a glazier please the Princess, and have such hands, the King will give him his daughter, and after his death he will be king." That is true enough, for my mother has a white cream-jug covered with tiny flowers, that has been cracked as long as I can remember, and yet it still holds together and has outlived more new creamjugs than I can count. SHE was one of the very best pupils in school in the city of St. Louis, but oh! so very, very poor, that, had it not been for her wise and brave little mother, I am sure she never would have gone to school at all. Katie was ten, and her brother Tim eight years old, and the brave little mother, who was three times as old as Katie,—which was not so very old after all,-had no one to help her to take care of them. But she had lived long enough to know that there was nothing in the world that could make up for ignorance, and nothing that everybody respected so much as a good education. The winter when Katie became ten years old was like all the winters,― bitterly cold some days and sunny and bright on others, but never so warm but that a glowing fire was needed, so that, with all the other things, there must be money for the coal. Mrs. Lovell, Katie's mother, was a seamstress, and there were many days when she had but little work to do, and the pay was always small-only fine things that she could have in the rich families where she might live and sew. So she struggled to pay the rent of her two small rooms and to keep Tim and Katie in school. 66 that was the great thing. "Plenty In school of money may come one day, little ones," she would say, "but it will not be worth much if you do not know how to use it. This is the most wonderful country in the world, my birdies. Tim may be President and Katie a Mrs. President, and you can't know too much of school-books. I'm sure that, when you 're grown up, you can never be glad and thankful enough that your mother sent you regularly to school. So don't mind the patched clothes, and the holes in the shoes, but keep at the head of the class, if you have n't a hat for your head!" And nearly every day she had something like that to say to them; so it was no wonder that they often forgot their poverty, and had better lessons than their class-mates. But the winter Katie was eleven years old, the brave little mother had less money than ever before, and as the spring-time came on they grew so very poor that there was not always enough of bread *left after breakfast to make a school-luncheon for Tim and Katie. "Give it all to Tim," Katie would say; "I believe I don't want anything at noon." Poor little Katie ! How hard she tried to think that she was not hungry! How empty her hands felt at first as she trudged along without her dinner! And how her heart beat, and how the blood burnt in her cheeks, when the nooning came, and she of all the girls had no luncheon to eat! Oh, if anybody should notice it! she thought, and she studied how she might behave that nobody should know she was so very poor. The hunger in her stomach was not half so hard to bear as the fear that somebody would know that she had nothing to eat. But, after a few days, poor Katie began to think that the girls noticed that she brought no luncheon. Then she thought that perhaps if she brought something that looked like one, they would never think about her eating it. How she thought it all out, I can not tell; but if any of you have ever been in trouble and tried to think your way out of it, perhaps you may remember that you thought of some very foolish and queer things, and this was the way with Katie. She might tie up a few coals in a paper, she thought, but her mother would need every coal to keep up the fire. There were some blocks in one corner of the small room-Tim's blocks, that Santa Claus had brought him one Christmas, two or three winters before. She could tie up some of those in a paper for a make-believe luncheon, and nobody would know. So she tied up a few blocks neatly, and when her mother noticed it as she started for school, and asked in surprise what she had in the paper, the poor child hung her head for a moment, and then burst into tears. 'Oh, Mamma .” she sobbed, "I wanted to make believe that I had some luncheon - it's only Tim's blocks!" For one moment the little mother did not understand, and then suddenly it all came into her mind -how the pride of her child was wounded because she could not appear as the other school-children did, and that she had fixed upon that simple device to hide her want. And how it made her heart ache more than ever that her poor little girl must go hungry! But she would not deprive Katie of the poor comfort of trying to "keep up appearances," and her throat was too full of choking lumps for her to trust herself to say much so she smoothed the little girl's hair and wiped away the tears from her face, and said bravely: "Never mind, Katie! Better days will come! Mother feels sure of it!" And then Katie slipped away with her little bundle, and the poor little mother sat down and sadly wept at the hardships that had befallen her little ones. When the nooning came, Katie sat at her desk with her make-believe dinner before her. Her teacher noticed that she kept her seat, and seeing her luncheon, went to her and said: “Why do you not go into the lunch-room and eat your luncheon with the other girls?" at the same time reaching out for Katie's bundle. "Oh, teacher!" cried Katie, bursting into tears, "don't touch it! and oh, teacher, don't tell, please! It's only blocks!" “Only blocks!” softly repeated the teacher, and tears filled her eyes. "Never mind, Katie, I'll not tell the girls. You are a brave and a dear little girl, and one of the best in the school!" Poor, poor child! The kind words were like manna to her heart; but, longing as the teacher was to give the child a portion of her own luncheon, she would not hurt her pride by the offer before others. But during a short session of the teachers when school was over, she related the incident, and spoke in such high terms of praise of the little girl, that each one resolved to do all possible to bring "better days" at once to the poor mother; and early next morning the better days began. one touched the brave little mother's self-respect by offering her charity, but plenty of work, with good pay, was carried to her, and enough of bread and milk, and new shoes, and coal, and all other needful things, soon came to their home through the mother's industry. And Tim's blocks went back into their corner, to stay there. Happy little Katie ! No As I write, there is a curious little brown-eyed creature darting about the room, now perched upon my shoulder, anon nibbling at my pen, balancing upon the edge of the inkstand, or sitting on its hind-legs upon the table, where it sportively tosses about a huge walnut. Now, spread out like a parachute, it is clinging to the window-shade, and now like a flash it springs into the air, coming down lightly, only to dart to some other elevation, thence to repeat its antics again and again. As you must by this time suspect, my pet is a flying-squirrel-one of the familiar examples of a large number of animals that can move through the air without wings. If we closely examine this pretty little creature, we find that between the fore and hind legs there is an expansion of the skin, which, when the legs are spread out, offers a decided resistance to the air and buoys the animal up exactly as though it carried a parachute. When our tiny playmate is in mid-air, notice how One of the most curious of this family is the sugar-squirrel a beautiful creature, with large, curling ears of a delicate ash-color above and white beneath. Like many squirrels, it is a nocturnal or night animal, lying concealed in its nest in some hollow tree until the sun disappears, when it comes out, and spends the night in wonderful leaps from tree to tree, in search of food and perhaps amusement. When descending from a great height, it seems as though they must inevitably dash headlong against the ground, so precipitate is their flight; but this never happens. That they are able to change the direction of their flight while in mid-air seems a very natural and reasonable supposition, though only on one occasion has the accomplishment of this feat been observed. The incident is related of a squirrel, which was being brought to England from its home in New Holland. The sailors had made quite a pet of the little creature, which was a source of great amusement to them on account of its astonishing leaps from mast to mast. One day the squirrel climbed clear to the top of the mainmast of the vessel, and seemed to be afraid to come down again, so one of the men started after it. But just as he was about to grasp the truant, it expanded its broad, wing-like membrane, and shot off into the air. At the same moment the ship gave a heavy lurch to port. It seemed to all In the forests of the islands constituting the Indian Archipelago is found a curious flying animal that forms the connecting link between the lemur and the bat. The natives call it the colugo, and also the "flying-fox," but it is more like a flyingmonkey, as the lemurs are cousins of the monkeys. Like the bats, these animals sleep in the day-time, hanging from the limbs and branches of trees, head downward; but as evening comes on, they sally forth, often doing great harm to the fruit on the neighboring plantations. In some parts of Java they are so numerous that it is found necessary to protect the fruit-trees with huge nets. The extent of their flights through the air is something astonishing. They sometimes drop to the ground and hop along with a shuffling kind of leap, but if they are alarmed, they spring to the nearest tree and in a moment reach its top by a series of bounds. Out upon the branches they dart, and with a rush are off into space. Sailing through the air like some great bird, down they go obliquely, swift as an arrow, a hundred and fifty feet or more, rising again in a graceful curve and alighting safely on a distant tree. In these great leaps they carry their young, which cling to |