What Chicky Thinks.
Seems to me I must be growing big very fast. I don’t believe I could get back into that little house if I should try. I don’t want to go back, either. I had to work too hard to get out the first time. There was no door, so I had to break the house all in pieces with my little beak. I couldn’t stand up, you know, when I was inside. I got very tired sitting on my little legs. I wonder how I knew enough to break open my little house? Nobody ever told me that it was prettier in the garden than in my house. ’Tis rather cold out here. I never was cold before; seems to me some little chick has carried off a part of my house. If I see him, with it, I’ll tell him he’s a thief. Oh, dear, dear! something is scratching my back. May be it’s the little thief! I wish I could look and see who it is.
STOP-A-WHILE.
There is growing in Africa a thorn called “Stop-a-while.” If a person once gets caught in it, it is with difficulty he escapes with his clothes on his back, and without being greatly torn, for every attempt to loosen one part of his dress only hooks more firmly another part. The man who gets caught by this thorn is in a pitiable plight ere he gets loose. You would not like—would you, boys? to be caught in this thorn. And yet many, I fear, are being caught in a worse thorn than “Stop-a-while.” Where do you spend your evenings? At home, I do hope, studying your lessons, and attending to mother’s words; for if you have formed a habit of spending them on the streets with bad boys, you are caught in a thorn far worse.
