Various

“ Well, a Croton-water chart of the system by which a river is brought to our bedrooms, instead of our having to go to the river with our buckets, would be just such another complicated, marvellous, treelike object, only I really think it would be more astonishing in one sense, because it is so wholly the hard brain-work of man instead of the mysterious divine creation of the Almighty, whose works are so profound that their wonders do not surprise us so much as when man produces something a tenth part or a thousandth part as extraordinary. ”

“ If we could cut away all the earth of the island, leaving the water-mains bare, and if we could tear down all the buildings of the city so as to allow the water-pipes to stand up, bare and naked, just as they now stand up in their covers of brick and plaster, I suppose the sight of that wonderful forest of big and little pipes would be as surprising as anything that any human being ever saw. ”

“ Joan was very sure that the morocco-bound book, of which she had caught a glimpse more than once when it was thrust away just as it had been this afternoon, contained poems—actual poems.
Joan gazed at her sister, as she lay back among the big cushions, with pride and admiration not unmixed with envy. She would so love to write poetry herself, but next best to that was having a sister who could do it. She only wished that Milly would let her see something that she had written. She could then assure her cousin, Peggy Reid, with absolute knowledge of facts, that her sister was a poetess. ”

“ From the American breastworks the great guns opened, but not a rifle cracked. Three-fourths of the distance was covered, and the eager soldiers broke into a run: then sheets of flame burst from the breastworks in their front as the wild riflemen of the backwoods rose and fired, line upon line. Under the sweeping hail the head of the British advance was shattered, and the whole column stopped. Then it surged forward again almost to the foot of the breastworks; but not a man lived to reach them, and in a moment more the troops broke and ran back. ”

“ On land, when a railroad crosses a driveway, they make the trains go over or under a road in many places, and where they don't do that, they make them put up fences or bars and station men to signal people who are driving of the approach of trains. Out here they are perfectly lawless. They cross our drives on the level always, and never yet has one of the steamers whistled or rung a bell to warn a fish to get out of its way."
"It doesn't seem right, does it?" said Jimmieboy.
"No, it doesn't," replied the merboy; "and the meanest part of it all is the steamship people don't care. ”

“ Yet under no circumstances is it a sport adaptable to evening clothes and kid gloves. If it were, we should not care for it as we do. But bicycle-racing—and I am speaking now essentially of in-door racing on a flat floor—is just as dangerous for experts as it is for the ignorant and the novice. More so, perhaps; for a novice's timidity will protect him from any attempt at riding through an iron girder. The dim light of an armory makes it difficult for a rider to judge angles and distances, especially when the track he is circling is marked solely by a chalk line on a slippery floor. ”

“ No single book in the world has so many interesting features as the Bible, partly because it is a library or collection of books in itself, written by many different authors, in different periods of the world. The Old Testament, which some people neglect, is full of the most exciting and beautiful stories. There is the story of Job, one of the very oldest in literature, telling how this "man in the land of Uz had seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and a very great household, and was the greatest of all the men of the East." ”

“ There's three times as much sea as land in the world, and so, of course, sea-sages are three times as wise as land-sages. What's more, you who live on the land don't begin to hear of a half of a millionth part of the things that happen under the sea, while we who live under the sea can get all the land news we want by tapping your Atlantic cable."
"Why, so you can," said Jimmieboy. "I never thought of that."
"Of course you didn't. You haven't got the kind of mind that thinks that kind of thoughts," sneered the merboy. ”

“ Learn the order of the books, my dears, and fix it in your minds by often reading the Bible, just as you would read any other book, only with the feeling that it will give you an amount of pleasure and profit that no other book can. There are, of course, many books based upon the Bible, and among them are such volumes as Bible Stories for the Young, published by Harper & Brothers, a very attractive little book to lie beside your Bible. ”

“ If it is true that an appreciable number of boys go into track athletics not for the sport, but for the medals, the sooner medals are done away with the better. But it does not seem possible that this can be so. It is more probable that baseball and tennis have been superseded, to a certain extent, by track and field sports because of the nature of the latter. A boy can go out and run or jump or put the shot all by himself at almost any time of the day. But he cannot go into an open field and play baseball with himself, nor can he go to a tennis-court and play tennis with himself. ”

“ LIFE-BLOOD OF A GREAT CITY. HOW NEW YORK GETS ITS WATER. BY JULIAN RALPH.
AQUEDUCT TUNNEL UNDER THE HARLEM.
The furnishing of water to millions of human beings in a city, and the arrangements for giving it to them as they want it, whether merely by the glassful or in the profusion with which it is used in a brewery, are among the most wonderful achievements of civilization. Imagine the way men live when they break their way into a new country; that is the only manner in which we can measure the convenience of a modern water supply. ”

“ Didn't you ever hear the story of the Porpoise and the Land-sage?"
"I never did." Jimmieboy answered. "I never heard of a land-sage either. What is a land-sage?"
"A land-sage is a creature like a man. In fact, he is a man, and he lives on the land, and thinks he knows everything, [Pg 453] when in reality he only knows land things."
"But isn't it good to know land things?" Jimmieboy asked.
"Oh yes—in a way," said the merboy, patronizingly. "But just because you know land things doesn't make you the wisest thing in the world. ”

“ One evening, when it was nearly time for Danny to go off duty, a messenger call came in the office, and as he was "next" he had to answer it. It took him to a big fashionable house where he had often been before, and he expected as usual to have a short errand with a note to some neighboring house or shop. But when a servant let him into the big hall he was soon joined by a maid who gave him a bundle to carry, and told him he was to take it, and pilot her to the Tenement Mission, "wherever that may be," said the maid, crossly. ”

“ Were you anxious?"
"Not exactly," replied Jimmieboy. "But it did sort of bother me when I thought of what might happen if this wagon should upset."
"Don't see anything you need to bother about in that," said the merboy, giving the near dolphin a flick with his whip for shying at a buoy. "It's twice as safe as driving on land. The land is hard, and if you were thrown out of a wagon there the chances are you'd be hurt; but here it is very different. Falling out here would be like tumbling into a feather bed. The water is very soft." ”

“ Why, if it hadn't been for our own police, police that we have to pay ourselves, you and I would have been run down just now."
"You don't mean to say you have police out here on the ocean?" said Jimmieboy.
"Yes," said the merboy; "several of 'em. In fact, we have about a million of 'em altogether. You land people call 'em porpoises. Ever see a porpoise?"
"Lots of them," Jimmieboy replied. "They come up our river sometimes, and papa has told me lots of stories about them, but he never said they were policemen."
"They aren't police-men," laughed the merboy. "They are police-fish. ”

“ Each of us should have her own Bible, for this is not a book to share with others. If we are studying a foreign language we should have, in addition to our English Bible, a French or German or Italian Bible, a Bible in the language we are trying to learn, and by reading in it every day we will greatly add to our vocabulary, and find ourselves rapidly growing used to the looks and sounds of the most familiar words. ”

“ Nothing in sport to-day is more important than to maintain a broad and honest spirit of fair play, for without such a spirit interscholastic athletics, and every other kind of athletics, are bound to deteriorate.
While speaking of this, I am reminded of rumors current in Brooklyn to the effect that one of the schools in the Long Island Interscholastic League has secured track athletes and baseball players by offering them half tuition, and in one case free tuition, as an inducement to attend that particular institution. ”

“ I am not opposed to what some timid people call "rough and dangerous" sport. Football should be encouraged, by all means, although it may justly be termed "rough and dangerous" for young men who do not know how to play. It is not dangerous for those who do know the game and have been trained to take part in it. ”

“ In one case he must secure one opponent at least, and in the other he must gather a dozen or more companions. To be sure, these objections are not very valid in New York, but I have no doubt the charm of individuality has tempted a good many boys to indulge in track sports. If baseball and tennis have suffered thereby it is all the more reason why baseball and tennis enthusiasts should strive by every means in their power to organize good nines and train good [Pg 467] tennis-players—for it is an unhealthy tree that puts all its vitality into one branch. ”

“ Except for very unusual reasons, a man twenty-one years old has no business being in school. He ought to be at work or in college. If, however, he still lingers about the school-room, there is no reason why special laws should be enacted for his benefit. He deserves to be discriminated against. Besides, there are probably not more than half a dozen men of that age in all the schools of the New England League, and these can certainly spend their time to better advantage in studying than at foot-racing and jumping. ”

“ Since the advent of cameras into nearly every family one has the opportunity of making actual pictures of festal occasions which occur, such as the birthday parties, the family picnics, John's new bicycle and his first unsuccessful attempt to ride it, the Hallowe'en frolic, the Christmas tree—any special day or event can be preserved in gelatine, and in a few years these pictures will have for one more interest and value than many made from much finer negatives. Now we want to suggest to our young amateurs that they start memory albums at once. ”

“ Camp was made on a wooded island opposite the village, and while the others were clearing the snow from a space some fifty feet square, and banking it up on the windward side, Phil took his gun and set forth to hunt for a Christmas dinner. An hour later he returned with four arctic hares and a brace of ptarmigan or Yukon grouse whose winter plumage was as spotless as the snow itself. ”

“ What is it, Milly?"
"A 'lectern,' I suppose you mean."
"Yes, that's it—'lectern'; and a big Bible to put on it, and lots of Prayer-books and Hymnals to stick around the church, and some vases for flowers, and a brass cross and foot-stools, and lots of other things they need. Mrs. Pearson said we must try to send as many fancy articles as we could to the fair, and try to sell some tickets."
"I have no time to make anything, and besides I don't do any fancy-work," said Millicent; "and if you don't mind, Joan, I wish you would go. I am very busy just now." ”

“ Cheek is a promising all-round athlete. In addition to vaulting and jumping he puts the shot 33 feet, throws the hammer over 100 feet, runs the 100 in 11 seconds, gets over the high hurdles in 171⁄2 seconds, and the low hurdles in 28 seconds. The reason given for his non-entry into these sports is that his team was so much stronger than that of any of the other schools in the league, that the O.H.-S. preferred to contest the games without his aid, and so decide the day by a few points only. ”

“ Because the Order of the Round Table, founded by Harper's Young People four years ago, has grown to such enormous proportions, has spread so far and wide, has gone into so many corners of the States of the Union, and European countries as well, that it demands some definite recognition, as one of the largest organizations of its kind in the world. ”

“ Never!"
"I wish you would write a poem about Cousin Appolina," said Peggy. "Hateful thing! She might take at least one of us abroad with her, if not all three. She has such loads of money, and no one to spend it on but herself."
"Probably she will take one of us," observed Joan.
"It won't be me, then," said her cousin, positively, but ungrammatically; "she hates me like fury. It will be one of you. Well, it wouldn't be much fun to dance attendance on Cousin Appolina if she should happen to have a cranky fit. ”

“ At Badajos, Ciudad Rodrigo, and San Sebastian they had carried by open assault walled towns whose strength made the entrenchments of the Americans seem like mud walls built by children, though these towns were held by the best troops of France. With such troops to follow him, and with such victories behind him in the past, it did not seem to Pakenham possible that the assault of the terrible British infantry could be successfully met by rough backwoods riflemen fighting under a General as wild and untrained as themselves. ”

“ It shows at once just what can be done with a bicycle in New York, what are the best ways of getting out of the city, and where the best streets for wheeling are through its whole length. Most of the black roads are of asphalt pavement, but of course the Riverside Drive, West Seventy-second Street, and the long avenues above the Park, as well as those in the Park, are of macadam. ”

“ But when we demand the full fruits of modern civilization, when we insist upon the building of huge dams and vast reservoirs and tunnels and pumping-stations, we must buy the water they bring in order to pay for the cost of the convenience. What we pay in New York amounts to about $1.75 a head for every man, woman, and child in the city, or more than $3,000,000 a year. ”

“ It is unfair to allow grown men to enter into competition with younger men, and I earnestly hope that those who control the policy of the N.E.I.S.A.A. will realize this, and unceremoniously shut the men out.
At the annual in-door meeting of the New England I.S.A.A., held in Boston last month, there were 342 entries, representing thirty preparatory schools. This would seem to show that there is even more interest in track athletics in Boston than there is in New York. ”