THE SAD STORY OF THE MOUSE.
BY KATHARINE PYLE.
One winter, when mamma was ill,
And scarce could move at all,
There used to come a little mouse
From out the bedroom wall.
Mamma would scatter crumbs for it;
'Twas company, she said;
She liked to see it run about
While she was there in bed.
And when mamma was well again,
The mouse would still come out,
And nose around in search of food,
And scamper all about.
At last one day—oh dear! oh dear!—
A naughty boy was I;
I set a trap to catch that mouse;
I'm sure I don't know why.
I'd hardly closed the cupboard door
Before the thing went, Snap!
I was afraid to go and look
At what was in the trap.
At last I looked; the mouse was there!
I carried it away;
I never told a soul of it;
I could not play all day.
And after that mamma would say,
"Why, where's our little mouse?
It must have found some other place
I think, about the house."
But, oh, I'd give my bat and ball,
My kite and jackknife too,
To see that mouse run round again
The way it used to do.
SHOOTING THE CHUTE.
BY WALTER CLARK NICHOLS.
More swiftly than the lightest-feathered swallow wings her flight southward in the fall, more rapidly than any railroad train in the world sweeps along its iron road, you speed down a long slide at an angle of about thirty-seven degrees. Your heart leaps into your throat as the boat you are in strikes the water and skims unevenly over the surface of a small pond, and then your heart comes back to its right place as you find you are unhurt. Then you give a gasp of pleasure, and are ready to try it all over again. For you have "shot the chute."
YOU SEE THE BOAT LEAP FORTY FEET AT A JUMP.
"Shooting the chute" is the invention of that intrepid swimmer and bold paddler Captain Paul Boyton. Captain Boyton, who is as brave as he is modest, is the man who has paddled over twenty five thousand miles on the principal rivers of the world in a peculiarly constructed rubber suit, over great falls, and through dark cañons, in Europe, Africa, and America; who has fought sharks and seals, and has had all sorts of strange adventures. The idea of the "chute" first came to him, he says, while shooting down the raging Tagus in Spain. In his book he says: