Various

“ Fact is often stranger and more thrilling than fiction. As you have never been away from home, why not take up books of travel? You can sit at ease in your own room, or perched in a crotch of the apple-tree, or half hidden in a heap of fragrant hay, and go with Miss Bird to Japan, with Arthur Arnold to Persia, with Miss Cumming to the Feejee Islands, or with Du Chaillu to the Land of the Midnight Sun. ”

“ We owe our lives to the plants—the food we eat, the pure air we breathe, as well as much of the rain that falls from heaven. They are ministering angels, and the loving, tender heavenly Father has appointed them their work to do—to beautify the earth and purify the air under the guidance of the glorious sun, which He has created, and which He keeps in its appointed path. ”

“ Carbonic acid gas, though so poisonous, is made up of two things, which are very good and perfectly harmless when they are separated—carbon and the life-giving oxygen. Carbon is coal, or something like coal. United together, these two harmless things make a dreadfully dangerous one, just as innocent saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal unite to form the deadly gunpowder.
Now notice how beautifully plants and animals are made to live together and help each other. ”

“ Plants can live on mineral matters alone, on earth and water and air, and these things they can change into their own flesh and blood, their stems and sap and fruit. Animals can only live on what the plants have already turned from dead into living material. We need water—that is a mineral—and salt and air, which are minerals too, if we are to keep alive and well. ”

“ Perhaps most boys and girls would say that Badminton is a slow game, and very childish; and, compared with lawn tennis, perhaps it is. But although it is by no means so robust a game, and requires not nearly so much skill as its cousin, it has many advantages. Lawn tennis is an out-door game, and demands a great deal of space and the best possible light; otherwise it gets sulky. Badminton, on the other hand, can put up with a small space and a moderately good light. Being, as we have said, less robust than the other game, wind does not agree with it. ”

“ Take more time to think it all over, Billy. Remember, I promise to feed, clothe, and send you to school winters, and when you get valuable to me I will also pay you wages. Your work will be hoeing corn and potatoes instead of braying like a donkey or thrumming on a banjo; but you will respect yourself a good deal more. It will be better to wash the sweat of honest labor off your face than to be smearing it into a blackamoor's. ”

“ Not one bird, or fish, or animal, not one single human being, could ever have lived on this earth, in the air, or in the water, if the plants had not come first, and prepared the earth for us to live in. ”

“ Animals breathe in the air, and help themselves to the oxygen which keeps them alive, but breathe out the deadly carbonic acid gas. Plants breathing the air separate by some wonderful power of their own the carbonic acid gas into carbon and oxygen, help themselves to the carbon, and breathe out the oxygen. What plants consume we throw away as useless, and what plants breathe out sustains our life. That is the reason why the country is apt to be so much more healthy than the city. The air that is poisoned by people and fires becomes purified by plants. ”

“ First, the root, as we have seen before, with its little helmet, bores its way down into the earth. If it finds no water or damp earth it soon wilts and dies, but if it finds a wet place it begins to soak up moisture. Besides the water, it sucks up all the parts of the earth that are dissolved in the water. The water it must have, and it will manage to live awhile on that alone, as Dr. Tanner did, but it can not live so very long. Poor ground means ground that has little or no plant food in it. ”

“ As they were enjoying their breakfast, the canoeists naturally talked over the events of the previous day and night. Harry had been kept perfectly dry by his canoe tent, one side of which he had left open, so as to have plenty of fresh air; and Charley had also been well protected from the rain by his rubber blanket, hung in the usual way over the paddle, although he had been far too warm to be comfortable.
"I'm tired of suffocating under that rubber blanket of mine, and I've invented a new way of covering the canoe at night, which will leave me a little air to breathe. ”

“ But get far enough away from these common things, and study the animals and plants that need your microscope to see them, and you would find things so much alike that you could not tell which was which. Many of these plants have no roots nor leaves, no flowers nor seed, and many of the animals have no heads nor legs, no eyes, nor mouths, nor stomachs. In Fig. 4, a is a plant, and b is an animal. Now how do you suppose anybody knows this? People who study these things do not guess—they know. The real difference lies in what these tiny little creatures do, not at all how they are formed. ”

“ From the books they had read, Harry and Joe had learned exactly what to do in case of capsizing under sail, and had often discussed the matter. "When I capsize," Harry would say, "I shall pull the masts out of her, and she'll then right of her own accord. Then I shall unship the rudder, put my hands on the stern-post, and raise myself up so that I can straddle the deck, and gradually work my way along until I can get into the cockpit. After that I shall bail her out, step the masts, and sail on again." ”

“ A veteran trapper recommends a curious device for fishing at night, known as the lantern trap. A pine torch or a bull's-eye lantern in the bow of a boat has long been in use as a means of attracting fish, but an illuminated bait under water is as novel a mode of fishing as it is successful.
The bait is easily made. A piece of stick phosphorus the size of a hazel-nut is cut into small pieces, and placed in a three-ounce glass vial half filled with sweet-oil. Care must be taken to cut and handle the phosphorus under water, as it is a dangerous substance to deal with. ”

“ The rules of Badminton are very much like those of lawn tennis, except that every stroke must be "volleyed"—that is, the shuttlecock must be struck before it touches the ground, for of course it will not bound. ”

“ The breeze is light and the water is smooth, and we ought to run down to the end of the lake by noon."
The little fleet made a beautiful appearance as it cruised down the lake under full sail. The breeze was westerly, [Pg 711] which fact enabled the canoes to carry their after-sails—technically known as "dandies"—to much advantage. When running directly before the wind the "dandy" is sometimes a dangerous sail, as it is apt to make the canoe broach to; but with a wind from any other direction than dead aft it is a very useful sail. ”

“ We had an old cabin, where we slept at night, and we spent our days delightfully, fishing, hunting, geologizing, and botanizing. We had not been in camp long before we discovered a tarantula village not far from our cabin, and we all determined to catch some specimens to take home with us. At first we had considerable trouble in catching them; they were so lively and so ugly that we always ended in killing them in self-defense. ”

“ Then he asked, "Wouldn't they fight?"
"Able but not willing to do what a body ought to do. I don't remember about the fighting. Perhaps it was only to endure something. Now I will go to bed," said granny, forgetting that Billy had read but one verse.
When he was left alone, he sat and pondered on those children of Ephraim until Peter tumbled into the house in his usual state. Then he let Ben sleep on, and he himself helped the tailor to bed, doing it with much less ceremony than the latter approved of. ”

“ The roots bring the plant a good deal, but the leaves are the principal feeders. You remember, perhaps, reading about the millions of little mouths the plant has all over its leaves. These mouths bring both food to nourish and air to sustain the plant. ”

“ But if you can once overcome your pride, and condescend to use such playthings, you will find that the game is not nearly so babyish as you may think it. The battledores should be good ones, strong and heavy, and strung either with catgut, like a tennis racket, or with string. The shuttlecock is greatly improved by being made heavy. Those sold in stores especially for Badminton are already made heavy enough, but the ordinary toy shuttlecocks require a little, a very little, melted lead poured into a hole in the cork. ”

“ This is a novel and most ingenious mode of fishing, and though there is very little sport in it compared with that of angling with a rod and line, it may be useful when, as frequently happens, fish will not bite, and the night's supper or the morrow's breakfast must be provided for, lest the young woods-man go hungry to bed, or awake with a keen appetite to realize that some hours must elapse before he can have breakfast. ”

“ The game is counted in the same manner as in lawn tennis—fifteen, thirty, forty, game; with deuce and vantage, when the score is forty all—and the one who first wins six games wins the set. Two, three, or four persons can play at the same time.
With good players, it will frequently happen that the shuttlecock will be kept in the air for several minutes without falling to the ground, and it is interesting to keep count of the number of times that it is thus returned over the net. ”

“ Every time you play the game of "Twenty Questions" you have to think and decide whether the particular thing you have chosen is "animal, vegetable, or mineral." Have you any notion what makes the real difference between them?
I imagine that, sooner or later, you will think and say the difference is that animals can move and plants can not. That will be a very sensible conclusion if you do come to it, though not a correct one, for plants do move, some of them very much as animals do ”

“ Air is a curious mixture. It is a gas made of several gases stirred together as you stir tea and milk and sugar. One of these gases is called oxygen (don't be afraid of the hard names) ; that is what keeps us alive. I won't give you the name of the next, because it is only used, like the milk, to weaken the tea. The third is a very disagreeable and dangerous gas, called carbonic acid gas. ”

“ There is hardly an out-of-the-way corner of our globe to which some brave traveller has not gone, and while reading the story of adventure or peril which the traveller relates, you will learn a great deal, and will cure yourself of a love for that sort of reading which is a mere waste of time. ”

“ Do not be satisfied with saying that a plant has leaves, and an animal has not. Look deeper, and answer more thoughtfully. There are many plants which have no leaves, nor roots, nor flowers, and there are some animals which seem to have all these things (Figs. 1 and 1a) . In some cases they are so much alike (Figs. 2 and 3) that it has taken the most careful study to decide whether they are plants or animals. ”

“ Harry was not at all frightened when he found himself in the water, and he instantly swam clear of the canoe to avoid becoming entangled in her rigging. He then proceeded to unship the masts and the rudder, and when this was done, tried to climb in over the stern. He found that it was quite impossible. No sooner would he get astride of the stern than the canoe would roll and throw him into the water again. After half a dozen attempts he gave it up, and swimming to the side of the canoe, managed to throw himself across the cockpit. ”

“ It was a simple fact that the railway company had sent a good many men to take care of the last obstacle in its way, and Squire Cudworth's joke lasted to the very end. He began to grow redder and redder in the face. Then he jingled more than ever for a minute, and then he stopped jingling altogether, for just then it seemed as if the whole side of the stable was stripped off at a push or two. The roof was already off. One minute more and the ends were gone, doors and all, and a well-dressed, gentlemanly person stepped out along the track.
"Boys!" shouted Rube. "There's the railroad now. ”

“ The small space required is a great advantage that Badminton enjoys. A large part of the population of this great country lives in city houses, whose back yards are perhaps fifty feet long and only half as wide. Not much in the way of games can be done in a city back yard; yet one can play Badminton there. ”

“ Though we have no birds or pets of any kind in our house, I am glad there are plenty of animals in Lincoln Park, and lots of birds there in the trees. Cruel boys sometimes frighten these birds and rob their nests. Can anything be more wicked than this conduct in boys? A great many sparrows make their home in some Virginia creepers that cover the front of our house. On Sunday last there was a great commotion in the vines, and we found after a while that it came from some old sparrows which were trying to make their young ones go out of the nest and earn their own living. ”

“ I like all the articles in our Young People, but don't know how to wait for the continued stories. Sometimes I get more circus than Toby Tyler does. I ride the old cow or an ox, have a dog that understands a good deal of English, and like to work with my papa. ”

“ I have no pets to tell about, not even a kitty, for my mamma dislikes both dogs and cats, and is afraid they may become mad, so she will not let us have them in the house. I suppose she knows best, because she is so much older and wiser than we children, but we can't help feeling a little bit sorry. ”

“ My papa is a clergyman, and has a parish here in Acton, but when I get to be a man I am going back to the States to live. I go to school. Please don't give Toby a new hat; we like him just as he is best. My papa says we would not know him with a new hat on. My brother Frank and I have a pet dog and a rabbit. We went on a trip to a beautiful lake last summer, and one day, when out in a boat fishing, my papa saw a little black bear come down to the water to get a drink.
Reginald P. ”

“ When a new Wiggle is given, it is a line which forms part of the outline of a picture already drawn by our artist. Those who try to solve the Wiggle problem draw a picture containing this line. Sometimes a little girl or boy happens to draw a picture which closely resembles the one which was the artist's idea when he drew the Wiggle which all are attempting. ”

“ The falls are very pretty, and there is a story about them that a long time ago an Indian was chasing a white man, and when they came to the edge of the falls, or just above (there is just above them quite a narrow place) , the white man leaped over, but the Indian did not dare to follow. ”