Various

“ Scarcely a breath heaved the dark surface of the lake, and no laughter of light danced in the sparkle of a crest. A pallor lay on the sandy levels and ridges of the beach similar to the upturned face of some one dead. Nature had set the stage for the tragedy of man. The little column left the fort at nine o'clock, a small company of friendly Indians in the van, then the caravan of transport wagons, loaded with rations and with women, children, and sick soldiers, then a few armed settlers, then a meagre uniformed platoon of less than two-score fighting-men. ”

“ Next day I went to an optician to ascertain whether or not I had normal vision. I was put through the usual tests of reading, without the aid of glasses, sentences in different-sized letters. Then the optician declared that I saw with most unusual accuracy. I was puzzled at this, for I regarded Mr. Augustus St. Gaudens, who had made the weather-vane statue of Diana, as the most gifted sculptor in America, and Mr. Stanford White, the designer of the tower upon which the statue stands, as one of our most accomplished architects. ”

“ But, unfortunately, about the time that young people reach an age when they begin to think seriously about art and architecture, the great majority of them also begin to lose that normal sight, without which distant objects can no longer be seen in accurate proportions. Or perhaps the architects might impress upon all those who criticise their work that a consultation with an oculist and a call upon a spectacle-maker would enable a critic to reform his adverse judgment. Such a course would be a good thing both for the eye specialist and the optician. ”

“ Harold, armed with a double-barrelled rifle, had hidden behind a big sand knoll near the gate. When John Kinzie helped his family into their frail barks of safety he had marked the absence of the lad, but there was no time to think further or search, for there was much business afoot. Harold saw his guardian now expostulating with Indian chiefs, now urging some special course on Captain Heald, who marched with his detachment, now encouraging the trembling women in the wagons. And so the column wended its slow course over the burning sand away from the fort. ”

“ The maddened red-skins, their eyes glittering in the weird light, waving their glittering candles from which smoulders of burnt wick were dropping, chanting some sort of exultant song, ran about the cellar as if they were the figures of a monstrous nightmare. Their eyes at last fell on the pyramid of barrels, and they darted at the expected treasure-trove. Harold had never ceased tugging frantically at the gate, and when the bolts jangled back and he slid the barrier, it seemed his dangerous companions must have heard. ”

“ THE LAST BEAR OF THE SEASON.
When the boys, after a long and tedious railway journey from the hot city to the cool wooded mountain country, arrived at the much-beloved hotel where they had spent several very happy summers, the first person to greet them was Sandboys, the curly-headed hall-boy with the twinkling eyes and rapid-running feet. ”

“ If a marble statue is ordered, the sculptor sometimes prefers to model on a small scale and then to put his model in the hands of skilful cutters in marble, who carry the work as far as they can judiciously, when it is again taken up by the sculptor, who finishes it, putting in the lines that proclaim his genius and commend it to the world as a work of art. ”

“ This being the case, an architect who has a normal vision, or corrects his vision by the aid of properly adjusted spectacles, and whose sense of proportion is also of a high order, will very likely continually be designing things that only a small percentage of those who are to look at them will be capable of appreciating. Out of a thousand grown persons who see his accurately proportioned work, one hundred will see it with normal eyes, and two hundred more, perhaps, will see it with eyes corrected by spectacles. ”

“ It was almost time to cut them and carry them away to the factory, when one day Nathan found Millia among the rows, and stopped to put both his big hands on both her shoulders with unusual gentleness. Looking up into his face, she thought how serenely happy it seemed.
"Milly," he said, laughing a little in quiet triumph, "they offered me eighty dollars an acre for this corn to-day."
"Why, Thanny!"
"Yes'm; and I took it." He walked away, down one row and up another. Then he faced her again. "Milly, we've struck pay dirt a'ready. We've found the gold," he said. ”

“ But if an architect himself have defective vision, he can either design his structure by mathematical rules, or do for himself what has just been suggested for his critics. At any rate, the statistics available, and these are to a large extent only approximated, show that the eyesight of Americans is getting all the time more defective, and lead to the conclusion that in the course of a few more years the exceptional person will be the one who does not wear eye-glasses or spectacles or squint impertinently through the "monocle," that distinguishing mark of English and Continental dandyism. ”

“ I want to kill all the birds I can and stuff them. Then I want to catch all the butterflies and insects I can and keep them." The King looked at me with wonder, and spoke to Mienjai, saying, "Does the spirit mean what he says?" After a little while he said, "Yes, I will give to the Moguizi the best hunters of our tribe."
"HE WILL BE ONE OF YOUR HUNTERS," SAID THE KING.
The following morning he called his people and said, "We must provide hunters for the Moguizi who has come to live among us." Then he shouted: "Men who are brave and who are not afraid of wild beasts, come forward. ”

“ Apples—"New York apples" are famous, you know—are so plentiful that people are not picking them at all. The trees are breaking with the load of them. They rot on the ground. One cannot even give them away. Thousands of bushels are useless, and every one says: "Oh, if some people in the cities only had them! We would rather see them do somebody good." Do you who live in the cities have to pay anything for apples now? ”

“ Here Sandboys looked gratefully at an invisible something—doubtless the recollection in the thin air of his departed case of whooping-cough, for having rescued him from the grave.
"That's queer," put in Bob, looking curiously at his old friend. "I don't see how whoopin'-cough could save anybody's life. Do you, Jack?"
"I guess I don't," replied Jack; "but it isn't queer if it saved Sandboys's life, because somehow or other queer things happen so often to him that they've stopped being queer to me." ”

“ He had felt a broken candle in one of the boxes where he hid, and this he now lit from his flint and steel. As he groped his way, peering at the cellar bottom, he perceived several black trails converging toward the heap of casks. He blew out his light with a gasp, and a breath of ice stirred the roots of his hair and chilled his marrow as the truth flashed on him. Some of the soldiers had left full powder-barrels and a train to destroy the careless savages, if possible, should they go down with lighted candle or torch. ”

“ In making the exposure great care must be taken not to move the camera, as if it is moved even the very least bit, a blurred line will appear in the picture showing just where the two exposures join. The focus must not be changed unless a plain background is used. In making the exposures for the two pictures the time of both must be equal. This is more necessary for an exposure made out-of-doors than for one made in the house. If the exposures are unequal in time the negative will be unequal in development, and, as a consequence, half of it will be lighter than the other. ”

“ Modelling the clay for a statue is one of the most fascinating, interesting, and, at the same time, instructive sights. From the moment the preliminary frame-work is constructed to the final delicate finishing-touches of the sculptor, the work progresses through many stages. It is seldom that we think of the time and labor spent on such works of art. ”

“ O'Donnell, at full-back, is a fair punter, a good line-backer, and a good tackler. He is beyond doubt the best player on the team, and plays as well as many a college man in the same position. Take it all in all, the New Britain team has a strong heavy line, but the half-backs run too high, and do not pay enough attention to following their interference, and the whole aggregation is too careless at tackling. ”

“ The star player among the Chicago High-Schools is beyond any doubt Teetzel, of the Englewood High-School, whose portrait we published in this Department last week. It is deeply to be deplored that any charges of professionalism should have been brought against him, and it seems that these should either be proved at once or entirely withdrawn and hushed. In the recent game between Englewood and Lake View, Teetzel proved himself a giant. At the outset it looked for a time as if Lake View were going to have the best of the argument; they forced the ball rapidly down the field and scored. ”

“ A live model is employed for the purpose, and he poses astride a dummy horse in the position the sketch and miniature model call for. After the figure is finished, even to the curve of each muscle, equipments are put on the dummy horse, and the model dresses himself in the General's costume and again takes the pose. The sculptor then proceeds to dress the General and his horse. With his many different tools he slowly shapes the clothing in the new clay that he has ruthlessly slapped on the exquisite modelling underneath. ”

“ They board themselves and live cheaply. Our fields are just now full of these pickers—thousands of men, women, boys, girls—and our streets are full of wagons carting the grapes to the railway stations for shipment. Although your maps show us bordering on Lake Erie, water transportation is impracticable from here. The banks of the lake here are high and rocky, and speed on water is too slow for perishable fruit. Besides, one could go only to Buffalo or Cleveland by lake, and the great grape markets are Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. ”

“ The buoyant spirit of youth is quite enough to carry you through all kinds of hardships. It is very nice for every young fellow to rough it, to go through hardships, to have plenty of walking, to eat all kinds of food, to paddle or row. ”

“ He was very short, not over five feet three inches in height. "Moguizi," said the King to me, "never mind his size; his heart knows no fear; he is a good shot; he is daring, and one of the best hunters we have. No one can come nearer game than he does. He is like a snake." ”

“ The Avenue is badly macadamized, and here, as elsewhere in this part of New York, the road-bed is torn up with repairs, and new plans and works for the system of roads which some day, when we are all dead and wheeling has gone out of fashion, will make the northern exits of New York the finest in the world. ”

“ Three hundred will therefore view his work as he does himself, and seven hundred, not knowing that their vision is defective, will judge that his work has been badly done. Therefore, build he ever so well, he is building only for a small minority. The children, with eyes ordinarily in a normal condition, should be the best friends an architect could cultivate, for they, in one sense, at least, usually have the capacity to look upon his work and say whether it be well done or not. ”