himself he said, because he had no time; though, of course, that was a mere evasion of his responsibilities—so I was sent with it. What made it awkward for me was that I knew the sub-editor. How ever, I took the slip of paper and the money, and, unknown to him, enclosed them in an envelope. Hanging about the office till it was quite dark, I crept up to the door and slipped the envelope into the letter-box. The money made it fall with a thump, and I made off as quickly and quietly as I could.

me.

From St. James's Gazette. EDUCATIONAL NURSERIES.

(BY A CHILD of six.)

No one who knows what it is to be brought up on alphabetical biscuits will wonder at my being able to write an article. But do not think me proud of it. Acutely do I feel the false position in which an educational nursery has placed Here am I, at the age of six years, so full of learning that my hair has ceased to curl. I spend my life between historical wall-papers, and when I think I am playing at ball the chances are that I am learning multiplication. Only the other day I was inveigled into what purported to be a game at soldiers, and before I knew what I was about I was half through the Wars of the Roses. At Christmas I got a present of (apparently) a pot of jam. I opened it, and out jumped the leader of the Liberal party. No matter how careful I am, I am constantly being tricked in this way. Of course it is too late now for any thing to be done for me. I am lost; and as they have got it all into me by false pretences I am a cynic as well. But there are younger children to follow, and for their sakes I appeal to parents. I would particularly implore them, as they remember their own childhood in the happy preeducational nurseries, to set their faces against the latest abomination the geographical carpet, which is even worse than the zoological doors, for there is no licking the paint off.

The_alphabetical biscuits are not so bad. Each of them has a letter on it, which is meant to catch your eye before you can get it into your mouth. With a little care, however, you can dispose of the biscuits without preliminary annoyance, unless your nurse or mother insists on your saying the letter before she lets you eat the biscuit. There are mothers who do that;

and if you give way at first, they have you into biscuits in one syllable in no time. Though I say the biscuit can be managed with comparative ease, the only sure way is to shut your eyes. Those who are inexperienced will say that it would be an easy matter to keep your eyes off the letter without shutting them. Quite so; but unless you shut them you are bound to look at something, and you can't look anywhere in an educational nursery without being caught. Say you slide the biscuit in at the left side of your mouth and keep your eyes fixed on the wall to the right; the result is that you are learning from a pictorial illustration who signed Magna Charta, or something of that sort; which entirely destroys the flavor. It is very doubtful whether a biscuit-unless perhaps at bedtime is worth all this bother. These biscuits are graded. That is to say, you pass from alphabetical biscuits to biscuits in one, two, and even three syllables; and then there are names of countries biscuits. One would expect the biscuits to get bigger as they become more difficult, but they don't. This is another illustration of the injustice of the system. Personally I gave up biscuits at the second syllable, preferring rather to go into animal gingerbread. And then look at those proverbial milk-jugs. Surely it is a little hard that a child can't take a drink of milk without being reminded for the thousandth time, by an inscription on the jug, that it is only dogs that delight to bark and bite.

-

I know all about Shakespeare and Milton and Rare Ben Jonson, and that class of people; but it is not my fault. It comes of not being suspicious. My little sister has a box of bricks that make into houses on weekdays and Westminster Abbey on Sundays. You get a picture of the Abbey with the box, showing how to build the bricks, and it is good enough fun in itself. But no sooner have we got the Abbey up than they pounce down on us and give us lessons on the Poets' Corner. The political ninepins are just as bad. They would make a good game if we could get to play with them ourselves, but of course that is not what is wanted. They represent nine kings of England, and as soon as we stick them up our governess asks who can tell her which is the fifth Henry. Then you get one mark for knocking a figure down, and two if you can also say at what period he flourished. The prize varies. Sometimes it is a poetry lozenge, or it may be a toy for teaching you the months of the year. We are young

and guileless, so we don't have the sense to see that we are being taken advantage of. Perhaps you don't know that we have a three acres and a cow puzzle, and a Lord Randolph Churchill who walks all the way round Sir William Harcourt. There is a Latin proverb, which no boy should know before he is fourteen, about the Greeks being most to be feared when they bring presents to you. But our own fathers and mothers are not a bit better than the Greeks in this respect; and I would strongly advise all children into whose hands this article may fall not to accept a present from any body without having a good look at it first. I got a ship on my last birthday that takes to pieces and packs away in a box. Do you think that was an honest present? It sounds like it; but it wasn't. If it hadn't been for that box I might not have known to this day how many ounces there are in a pound. This is the way you are tricked. There are a lot of wooden squares with the ship which are piled on the deck and called passengers' luggage. Well, no sooner have you your luggage on board than they make you count the squares, and ask, if one square weighs an ounce and there are sixteen ounces in a pound, how many squares will it take to weigh half a pound? Of course by this time you see you have been swindled again. Speaking of squares, children may be warned against them in particular, for they are the nastiest things I know of. This is because they have six sides. Before taking them from any

body examine them carefully, and the chances are that you will find one side to be geographical and another arithmetical, and so on. They have generally poetry on them too, like —

L stands for London, which is a great city; And also for leeks, to eat which is a pity.

66

I am, however, inclined to think that the most invidious thing we have in our nursery is the money-box. The old style of money-box was plain and honest, and did not pretend to be anything else. It had written in big letters on it, too, Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves." That was an honorable warning, and if any one put money into it it served him right. Ours, however, is a very different affair. It consists of a box with a donkey standing near it, and if you put a penny on the donkey's tail it kicks up one of its hind legs and knocks the penny into the box. It is a great joke to see the donkey doing this; but of course it is only an artful way of getting our money out of us. It may be retorted that we should know better; but we are innocent and at the mercy of designing parents. Why, if any of them were to see me writing these reflections, what do you think they would say? They would badger me till I told them what ink was composed of and what other ingredients besides linen rags entered into the composition of paper! I know them; and if ever there was a child of six who was tired of this life it's BOBBY T.

SOLOMON'S JUDGMENT IN CHINESE.-Two women came before a mandarin in China, each of them protesting that she was the mother of a little child they had brought with them. They were so eager and so positive that the mandarin was sorely puzzled. He retired to consult with his wife, who was a wise and clever woman, whose opinion was held in great repute in the neighborhood.

She requested five minutes in which to deliberate. At the end of that time she spoke: "Let the servants catch me a large fish in the river, and let it be brought me here alive." This was done.

"Bring me now the infant," she said, "but leave the women in the outer chamber.

This was done, too. Then the mandarin's wife caused the baby to be undressed, and its clothes put on the large fish.

"Carry the creature outside now, and throw it into the river in the sight of the two wom

en."

The servant obeyed her orders, flinging the fish into the water, where it rolled about and

struggled, disgusted, no doubt, by the wrapping in which it was swaddled.

Without a moment's pause, one of the mothers threw herself into the river with a shriek. She must save her drowning child.

"Without doubt, she is the true mother," she declared; and the mandarin's wife commanded that she should be rescued, and the child given to her.

"Without a doubt, she is the true mother," she declared. And the mandarin nodded his head, and thought his wife the wisest woman. in the Flowery Kingdom. Meantime, the false mother crept away. She was found out in her imposture; and the mandarin's wife forgot all about her in the occupation of donning the little baby in the best silk she could find in her wardrobe.

For other varieties of the same story, see Rhys Davids, "Buddhist Birth Stories" (vol. i., pp. xiii. and xliv.); "Tibetan Tales," by Schiefner and Ralston (pp. xliii. 121); Max Müller, "India, what can it teach us?" (p. 11). Academy.