LESSON XVII.

THE FAIRY ARTIST.

Oh, there is a little artist
Who paints in the cold night hours
Pictures for little children
Of wondrous trees and flowers!

Pictures of snow-white mountains
Touching the snow-white sky;
Pictures of distant oceans
Where pretty ships sail by.

Pictures of rushing rivers
By fairy bridges spanned;
Bits of beautiful landscape
Copied from elfin land.

The moon is the lamp he paints by;
His canvas the window pane;
His brush is a frozen snowflake;
Jack Frost the artist's name.

LESSON XVIII.

HOW RIVERS ARE MADE.

Have you ever seen a brook or creek? A river? Is there a brook or river near here? Who can tell where it begins? where the water conies from that fills it? where it goes? Let us try to understand this.

DID YOU EVER SEE A SPRING?

As vapor rises into high, cool air, or is carried with the air in winds up the sides of mountains, it turns into water again, and comes falling down as rain.

Now think where the rain that falls on mountains must go. Some of the water runs off on the surface, down the mountain slope. Some sinks into the ground, and runs along in little streams below the surface. It will appear again, bubbling out of the mountain side as a spring. The spring is the beginning of a river.