SOME BITS OF NATURAL HISTORY.
"It stands to reason," writes Toby Trip in his composition, "that most of our rats come from Gnaw-away, and that some of our choicest poultry are cotch in China, while there are no black folks in the Isle of Wight. Yet there are women in the Isle of Man, wise people in the Scilly Isles, and the best-natured men in the world are natives of Ire-land."
"What were the Dark Ages?" asked the governess at the morning lessons.
"That must have been before spectacles were invented," guessed May.
"Oh no!" interrupted Cedric; "I know why they were called the Dark Ages. Because there were more knights then."
"Well, Teddy, have you been a good boy to-day?" asked his mother upon her return home late in the afternoon.
"No, ma'am," replied the truthful Ted.
"I hope you have not been a bad boy?"
"No, ma'am; not a very bad boy and not a very good boy—just comfortable!"
"What time is it, my lad?" asked an American traveller of a small Irish boy, who was driving a couple of cows home from the fields.
"About twelve o'clock, sir," replied the boy.
"I thought it was more."
"It's never any more here," returned the lad, in surprise. "It just begins at one again."
A little boy and his sister were allowed, this summer, to collect the eggs from the hen-coops, but they were told they must never take away the nest-egg. The little girl, however, did so one morning by mistake, and her brother told her she must take it right back, "because that was what the old hen measured by."
When Freddy got back from the mountains last week he was much pleased at the sight of clean stiff curtains hanging in all the rooms.
"Oh, mamma," he remarked, "the windows have all got clean shirts on!"
"That's the pretty white cow that gives us the nice white milk," said the country boy to his little city friend.
"And is that the brown cow that gives us the coffee?" asked the latter.
A newsboy saw a dime lying on the ground in the City Hall Park. A tramp sitting on a bench near by saw the boy pick up the piece, and claimed it at once as his own.
"Your dime did not have a hole in it, did it?" asked the boy.
"Yes, it did," said the tramp; "give it up!"
"Well, this one has not got any hole in it, so I guess I'll keep it."