“I can’t be sure of that, Claire. What if my twenty-five cents helped to encourage them to live the life which kept them in the midst of such temptations? That is what good men who have studied and thought about these things say of the circus. Besides,” and here the boy’s face took on a little touch of lofty scorn, “I want to grow up to be such a character that the jokes and jumpings of evil men cannot amuse me; I want to learn to be above them. Then you see what the ragged little street boy thought?”
“Yes,” said Claire gravely; “I never thought much about it; I just went, of course, because the others did, but I shouldn’t like to be counted on that side, exactly. Robert, maybe I won’t go any more. I must think about it.”
Myra Spafford.
HOW THE DEER KNEW.
MY neighbor’s little boy one evening saw his teacher coming up the lane and called her in to take a look at his pet fawn.
“Well, if he didn’t get half a foot taller since I saw him last,” said the teacher; “if he keeps on like that, Tommy, he will be a big deer the first thing you know.”
“Yes, he’s growing,” said Tommy; “but I wanted to see you about something else. He seems to be sick, and we do not know what to do about it.”
“Why, he looks all right now; what seemed to be the matter with him?”