Various

“ Some one has probably imagined that this curious floating animal looks like a Portuguese war vessel, and on that account has given to the innocent and defenseless creature a name which seems to us very inappropriate. We will not be dismayed, however, by a forbidding name, for the graceful animal is not in the least warlike. I hope you may all have the pleasure some day of seeing one floating over the sea like a fairy vessel, not minding the winds or the storms. You will be delighted with its beauty, and you will wonder how so frail a bark can withstand the waves. ”

“ Fanny Guernsey and our Ned had been reading Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson, and so we had all suffered a most horrible shipwreck, and had finally been cast upon a desert island. The ship was an ancient cradle, into which we were packed like sardines, and which, owing to Ned's vigorous efforts at "the wheel," lurched around the attic in a fearful way, and finally tumbled us all out in a heap upon an old-fashioned braided rug in a corner. We found ourselves too dense a population for "the island," and so Jamie Guernsey and I paddled off to the wreck, and got aboard. ”

“ There was a long silence. Then Fanny drew a long breath, and each one of us immediately did the same. Ned, always the leader, stepped forward a little, and said, "Little Grandmother, we mean, you know, to be all right—but—but—"
"And we'll do our best after this; indeed we will," added Jamie.
"That's so," put in Phil, rather awkwardly.
"We love, you, Little Grandmother!" burst out Fanny—clasping her hands—in a little ecstasy, while Jessie and I murmured something in chorus about wishing to be like her; but there was no response from the portrait to anything that we said. ”

“ Phil"—Phil started and began to quake—"I am sure I hold no personal grudge against you for that unlucky shot that mutilated my poor head in this way, but your general conduct is a distress to me. A boy of twelve should begin to show his knightly qualities, if ever he hopes to bear the grand old name of gentleman. Gentleman, indeed! to shoot his great-grandmother, with scarcely a pang of regret, and trip his girl cousin, and witness her fall with a laugh! Gentleman, indeed! And, Ned, you are scarcely a whit behind. ”

“ Everybody knows by this time that in the great college game played on Decoration-day Yale beat Princeton easily. The fact is, the Princeton men were sadly wanting in sharp fielding, and fielding is the real science of the game. Your good fielder is always on the move. No matter where the ball may be, it will be in-field in a few seconds, and neither basemen nor short-stop must be caught napping.
Each man must be ready to support his fellow, and he must not think that because the ball does not come in his particular part of the field he need not trouble himself about it. ”

“ This pleased us very much; not that we were exactly fond of hornets, but it made it more exciting. No matter what a boy is doing, he always has to go for a hornets' nest when he sees it; and we never thought about being warm or anything else, but just to send those hornets flying. ”

“ You are brave, in a sense, but the bravery that attacks weakness, and shouts over its own triumphs, is a spurious bravery. A fine Sir Galahad or Sir Philip Sidney you would make! There is as crying need of brave and courtly men now as in the days of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, but where are they? ”

“ This is the nest of a marsh wren. Now you may cross the fresh-water marshes all day long, and you will see no such thing, and yet you will see numbers of the short-billed marsh wrens, and you will pass many of their nests, and the nests will look almost exactly like those perched up in the tops of the salt-water grasses, but you will not see them unless you know where to look. Why? Because instead of being away up on the grasses, they are placed at the roots. ”

“ If he has not a hand that acts directly with the eye, and an eye that sees almost before it has time to look—above all, if he shrinks from the swiftly darting ball, or winces as the bat is swung within a very few inches of his head—he will not make a catcher. ”

“ Can you tell why they differ so in their nest-building? I can not. Each nest, of either species, is a coarse ball, as already mentioned, [Pg 523] with a round hole on the side, and inside is the real nest, a beautifully smooth and comfortable place for the bird and her young."
"Is the nest like this one in the drawing? This has a hole in the side."
"Somewhat like it, but it is built commonly of coarser materials. I mentioned also that the marsh wrens of either the salt or fresh water species were peculiar in their notes, for you can scarcely call it a song. ”

“ The qualities which cricket brings out and educates (and it is fully as much so with base-ball) are qualities that make a man or boy courageous, quick to act in emergency, and loyal. These are the three qualities that are most desired in a soldier, and especially in one who is set over others. ”

“ Fathers and mothers are all very well, but, you see, as mother explained the last time father had to whip us, they feel a responsibility. Now, grandfathers and grandmothers haven't any such responsibility. They can just give themselves up to being good-natured, and let a fellow have a good time. If he turns out bad, you see, it ain't their fault, and they don't have to worry about not having done their duty by him.
My grandfather lived just out of Blackridge, on a large farm. ”

“ The lynx realized that his enemy on horseback was more dangerous than the dogs. He sprang up and bounded away amongst the brush. The two free dogs tore after, and Captain Banner, hastily rescuing the gasping Poncho, spurred on too, coming up to the next battle-ground just when as close a rough-and-tumble fight as ever one could behold was under way.
The lynx had been overtaken. Turco had thrown himself upon him and pulled him down, while Red Jacket also sprang to his companion's help. But theirs was by no means the victory. The ground sloped considerably. ”

“ It seemed to me that it was only one layer of fine fibres, hair, grass etc. But there it was, an arch, and she was doubtless contented."
"What did you mean by the marsh wrens being queer little fellows?"
"They are queer fellows, sure enough. Queer in their nests, queer in their song, queer in the places they choose for their homes. They are of two species, quite closely resembling each other, and yet one will never live where the water is fresh, and the other will live only where it is fresh. ”

“ That is the way in which the greater number of birds build. But many of the wrens have the propensity to arch their nests over. The one in the drawing is represented correctly. They always seem determined to have an arch, even if it is not needed—if there is an arch there already. One pair, I recollect, built their nest inside a small gourd shell. The top of the shell arched over so close that the back of the bird as she sat in the nest almost touched the shell, but she had not been contented without having an arch of her own, and she had actually made one no thicker than fine paper. ”

“ I went up by the back attic stairs. There was fun, I can assure you, in the main attic. I never heard such a Babel. I went to the little open window that was made to let light through from the store-room into the main attic, and saw that you had set the portrait on the old dresser on the other side, and so covered the window; but through that ugly hole that Phil made in the Little Grandmother's head I could see that Ned and Phil were making terrible havoc with the girls, while Jamie was trying to defend them. ”

“ Every player plays not for himself alone, but for his side, and it is in the perfect working together of the whole nine that the highest art of ball-playing consists. The basemen have their regular positions, but it must be remembered that the game is where the ball is, and that the fielder who can best reach the ball is the one who should field it. ”

“ He must be able to do the work of any of the in-fielders, to occupy a baseman's place when that person is fielding a ball, to "back up" the basemen, so as to cover any swift or widely thrown balls which they may be unable to reach, and to back up the pitcher, and so save him extra work in fielding balls returned to him by the catcher. The most eminent positions in a nine are, of course, those of pitcher and catcher, but the short-stop may have just as much enjoyment out of his part, and may do his side as much service as the more prominent players of the "battery." ”

“ We looked from our Little Grandmother to each other in astonishment, and then the voice went on:
"But girls are not as they used to be, and perhaps they can not be. The world is growing weaker and wiser, and you have more already in your little noddles than I ever learned from books. ”

“ I like "Toby Tyler" and "Talking Leaves" the best of all the stories. I have a pet rooster; his name is Whitehead, because when little he had a white spot on the top of his head. He is so tame that my little sister can take him by the tail and drive him all around the yard like a dog, and he will not try to get away; and when we have a bunch of bananas on the veranda hanging up over the railing, he will fly up on the railing and pull the bananas off the bunch, and drop them down for the hens that are on the ground below him. I have a handsome parrot ”

“ He lives in the woods, he carries his tail as a robin or a bluebird does, and his song is not like the few trilling and twittering notes of the house wren. He pours out a flood of music that is similar to that of a thrush; you can scarcely believe when you see him that so much power of notes can come from a body so small."
"I see in this drawing, Uncle Horace, that the European species makes a nest with only a hole in the side. I have seen a robin's nest, and several swallows' nests, and sparrows' nests, and they were all open on the top, like a cup ”

“ The birds are probably wrens, Bennie, but we will go and see."
As we were passing around toward the rear of the barn I heard, sure enough, the song of a wren from the branches of a cherry-tree which we passed, and when we reached the "boot," out flew the mate of the songster, and without going further than the nearest fence post, she stopped and began to scold us at a furious rate.
"That is just the way she went on before, Uncle Horace. What a spiteful little thing she is!"
"Oh no, not spiteful, Bennie; she is only standing up for her rights. ”

“ THAT HORNETS' NEST. BY CHARLEY GRAYSON.
Boys never have such splendid times anywhere as they do at their grandfathers'. How some fellows get along the way they have to without any grandfathers or grandmothers I never could make out. Just fancy having no grandfather to go and see Christmas and Thanksgiving and summer vacations! The fact is, a boy without any grandfather can't begin to have half a good time. ”

“ They drove all over the town, stopping now and then to speak with some of their friends, or to answer questions as to Abner's health. When it was nearly time to return home, Toby turned the ponies' heads toward the pasture, where he knew his partners were waiting for him according to agreement.
"We'll go on with the circus now," he said to Abner, "for I can take you with me in this team, an' you can stay in it all the time we're practicin', so's it'll be 'most as good as if you could do something toward it yourself." ”

“ Base-ball has long been recognized as the national game of this country, and if any one has any idea that cricket or lawn tennis or lacrosse is likely to put it into the background, that person should have been one of the twelve thousand persons who witnessed the great game between Princeton and Yale Colleges on Decoration-day. ”

“ They often go into empty boxes, and it is curious how much work they will do in filling up a box when it is too large for their little nest. I recollect one case where a pair of wrens took a fancy to a soap box which was more than a foot long, and rather than leave any part of it vacant they actually worked away till they had piled grass, etc., into it clear down to the very hole by which they entered, and there they built their nest right down close to the entrance. These were all American wrens; but here is a beautiful drawing of another species never seen in this country. ”

“ Yes, in our Southern States, and even no further south than Delaware, we find a species decidedly larger than our house wren, and having no resemblance to it as far as familiarity with men and houses is concerned. ”

“ In fact, the bird is found in most parts of southern and western Europe, and is just as familiar in its habit of coming about houses there as our wren is here. They all of them seem to like the idea of being where people are, and yet they are timid and retiring little things after all. ”

“ I have a little sister Dora, four years old, who came running in one evening and said, "Mamma, the gipperwills are singing, and it is time to go barefooted." She had been told that when the whippoorwills sing there is no danger of catching cold. My home is on a high location, overlooking a beautiful valley—a landscape that never fails to please all who look upon it. ”

“ Like the Constitution, base-ball is one of the institutions of the country, but it has an advantage over that important document in the fact that the citizens of this country have mastered the art and science of base-ball (or think they have) long before they know anything about the Constitution. ”

“ I think Jimmy Brown's stories are the funniest. We read one paper through in a week; and I am so glad when the first of the week comes, so that we can have a new one. I enjoy reading the letters in your paper very much; but I have never seen one from Warwick yet, so I thought I would write one. I live on a farm not far from the village, and it is a very pleasant place. Our school yard is very large, and down at the lower end there is a creek, and there are some very large trees on the bank, and we eat our dinner there in the summer.
Carrie B. ”

“ You must then return the handkerchief, and while you pretend to be searching for the marks draw out the thread that held the dime, and drop the coin into the palm of your hand, taking care to rub between your finger and thumb the spot where the threads have been in order to eradicate the marks. This variation seldom fails to confuse the company.
You must remember to keep talking the whole time, and always try to make a joke, or otherwise to distract the attention of the audience, while you are executing the necessary changes. ”

“ The tentacles of the Portuguese man-of-war are more than twenty feet long, yet they may be drawn up to within an inch of the bladder. It is exceedingly interesting to watch them as they are drawn up and then let down again. They are furnished with lasso cells, which not only wound the prey, but sting bathers or any persons who come in contact with them. Even after death the tentacles produce irritation when they are touched. ”