What a curious thing is the little brown toad;
Do come and look at it, pray!
It sits in the grass, and, when we come near,
Just hops along out of our way.
It does not know how to sing like a bird,
Nor honey to make like a bee;
'Tis not joyous and bright like a butterfly;
Oh, say, of what use can it be?
But, since God made it, and placed it here,
He must have meant it to stay:
So we will be kind to you, little brown toad,
And you need not hop out of our way.
E. A. B.
TRUE STORY OF A BIRD.
One day last spring, in looking over the contents of some boxes which had long been stowed away in the attic, I found some pieces of lace, which, though old-fashioned, seemed to me very pretty. But they were yellow with age,—quite too yellow for use.
I took them to the kitchen, and, after a nice washing, spread them on the grass to bleach. I knew that the bright sun would soon take away their yellow hue.
A day or two after, Johnnie came running in, and said, "Auntie, the birds are carrying off all your old rags out there," pointing to the place where the laces were spread. Out I went to see about my "old rags," as he called them; and I found that several pieces were missing. We knew that the birds must have taken them; but, where to look for them, we could not tell.
That afternoon, Johnny invited me and his cousins to take a row with him in his boat to Rocky Island, of which the readers of "The Nursery" have heard before. We were all glad to go. As we were passing some bushes on the bank of the river, one of us spied something white among them. We wondered what it could be.