When Tommy reached home that night he found his father propped up in bed making a supper off of new-laid eggs. His father said it was driving the hens round on the sunny side of the farm, but Tommy stuck to it that it was the horseshoe. After that it was like the house that Jack built. The hens began to lay; Pop began to eat and get well, and read the Psalms instead of Job; the cow had a pretty calf, and began to give lots of milk; the winter began to break; and the doctor began telling the Tucker family of a noble way of squatting out West that beat their way all to nothing, and how there was lots of land out there considerably better than the sunken lots, and how, instead of watching one lazy horse, that wouldn't run away without there was a providence in it, Tommy might have a whole drove of chargers like Mr. Crœsus', and Mr. Tucker might raise millions of bushels of golden grain, and he shouldn't wonder if Tommy would be President yet, and his three little brothers feeding away at a public crib that never gives out.
Tommy says it's all the horseshoe, but the doctor's made a sum of it in this way:
PXP=P.
Pluck multiplied by Perseverance equals Prosperity. The doctor says the example is to be followed in a general sort of way, but principally by stopping a runaway horse when there's an old coward of a doctor behind him.
[SOMETHING ABOUT SHIPS.]
BY LIEUTENANT J. A. LOCKWOOD.
After the hull of a ship is built, she is launched before her spars are put in. This launching is usually done stern foremost; sometimes bow foremost, and, in very narrow rivers, side foremost. The Great Eastern was launched side foremost in the river Thames.
Under the general name of spars are included the masts, bowsprit, yards, booms, and gaffs of a ship. It will not be necessary to inform the boys who live near our seaports what masts and yards are; but perhaps some of America's future admirals, who have yet to see their first ship, will be interested in knowing that a mast is a stick perpendicular to the deck, and yards are sticks to which sails are bent, and are at right angles with the masts; the bowsprit is a stick projecting over the bow to carry sail forward.
Each of the three masts of all but very small vessels consists of a number of sticks one above another. The "heel" of the topmast comes a little below the "head" of the lower mast, and is secured by a "cap," a sort of iron band, and a bar, called a "fid." Above the topmast comes the top-gallant-mast, and above that the royal-mast.