But true to holy teachings, first his evening prayer

he said,

And kneeling gently down, he clasped his stiffened hands and prayed.

5. "My heavenly Father," were the words that from his pale lips came

And many a dark and dismal night his prayer had been the same,

"Please let me die and take me to the gentle Shepherd's fold;

I want to go so very much, I am so very cold.

6. "When mother died and went to heaven to be an angel bright,

She said I might come pretty soon-please let me go to-night;

I want to feel her dear warm arms again around me fold;

O Father! let me go to her, I am so very cold."

7. There was a time, whene'er these same small hands were clasped in prayer,

At dusky hour of eventide, another form was there;

And ere these curls were laid to rest upon their downy bed,

A father's hand in blessing lay upon that curly

head.

8. There was a time when round this self-same childish form were thrown

The thousand comforts, dear delights, and guardian cares of home;

The budding happiness of life shone on his carefree brow,

And love and warmth and light were therewhere are those blessings now?

9. 'Twas not the ocean storm that sank the father 'neath its wave;

'Twas not a foul disease that laid the mother in

her grave;

'Twas not the raging flame that swept the pleasant home away,

And turned the patient toil of years to ashes in a day.

10. 'Twas the demon of the wine cup set the father's brain on fire,

And plunged his soul and body into ruin, dark and dire;

While drop by drop the life-blood oozed from out the loving heart

Of her who vowed to cling to him till death itself should part.

11. And when her weary life was o'er they laid her in the ground,

And left her child in this cold world, to wander up and down.

And now alone with freezing form beneath the wintry sky,

It kneeled upon the cold, white snow and wildly prayed to die.

12. When morning with her streaming light came o'er the eastern hill,

And flashed her beams across the plain, she saw him kneeling still;

And from the cold and parted lips came not one

trembling word;

The blue eyes raised to heaven were closed

'orphan's prayer" was heard.

LIV.-HOW NAILS ARE MADE.

1. One of the most interesting places I ever visited was a nail factory. In one room there were as many as fifty strong iron machines with sharp steel jaws that bit chunks of iron in two as easily as you can bite in two a piece of soft bread.

2. The noise made by these machines was absolutely fearful. I wanted to stuff my ears with cotton, but I thought that would not be very civil to my guide. After a little while I became accustomed to it, and soon I found myself so much interested that I really did not think of the noise.

3. Some machines nip off the tacks so fast that a streanı of finished tacks runs down a tin tube into a reservoirthousands in a minute. Listen to the ticking of the clock, and reflect that every time it ticks at least twenty tacks are snapped off. But I must tell you how they do it.

4. First, the iron bar, as it comes from the iron works, is put between immense rollers, which flatten it out as nicely as a cook can roll out pie crust with a rolling-pin. The bar of iron is thus made into a sheet, just thick enough for the nails they want to make. It goes next to the slitting machine, which makes no more fuss about slitting it into the proper widths than your scissors make about cutting paper.

5. These strips are cut a little wider than the length of the nails to be made from it, because heads are to be made on the nails. When these strips of iron are all ready, a man takes one, and slips the end into the steel jaws of one of the nail machines.

6. These jaws are worked by steam-power, and instantly they bite off a nail, while a furious little hammer springs out suddenly, and with one blow on the end of the bit of

iron flattens it, and thus makes a head. If you want to know how hard a blow that must be, take a piece of iron and try to pound a head on it yourself.

7. The instant the head is made, the jaws open and the nail drops out, finished. Of course it is done much quicker than I have been telling you, for a machine can make brads (which I need not tell the boys are small nails without heads) at the rate of three thousand a minute.

8. It is said that "figures won't lie," and I hope they will not; but I must admit that it is hard to believe that story. After the tacks come out of the machine they are "blued," as it is called. This is done by heating them in an oven or on an iron plate. Then they go to the packing room, where one girl can weigh and put up two thousand papers of tacks in a day.

9. How many kinds of nails can you name? You will probably be surprised to hear that two hundred kinds of nails are made in one factory, beginning with spikes which weigh nearly half a pound each, and ending with the tiniest kind of tacks, not a quarter of an inch long.

10. Men did not always have machines to make nails for them, and of course they had to make them by hand. That was not an easy thing to do, for they could not make them of cold iron, but had to heat every one.

11. In some parts of England they were very slow to get machinery, for the ignorant people, thinking their trade would be spoiled, often broke up and destroyed machinery that was brought there. Many in England still work at nail making as their grandfathers did.

12. Every man has a little forge—such as you have seen in a blacksmith's shop if you live in a village — and a small anvil. Every child is put to work to make nails at eight or nine years of age, because they earn so little that every one of the family must help to earn bread. Of

course these children have no time to learn to read, and many grown men and women can not read or write.

13. This is the way they make the nails: They buy iron rods just the right size for the nails they make - for one family always makes the same size of nail. They take one of these rods, heat it red-hot at the forge, lay it on the anvil, and cut it off the length of a nail; then, laying away the rest of the rod, they take the piece they have cut off, pound it out to a point at one end, and pound on a head at the other.

14. A very slow operation, you will say, when you think how fast the machines snap them off. A whole family scarcely ever earns more than five dollars a week, and a part of that has to go for the coal it uses.

15. One of the nail factories in our country, that I have read about, uses one hundred and fifty tons of iron in a week, all of which is bitten up into nails.

LV. "READ THAT AGAIN, JACK."

1. Around in Chester Alley lived Mr. Hall. The world outside spoke well of him, and many envied “Joe Hall's luck," for his hands were always full of work, and his pocket always had a musical ring of silver about it. He had three children, two bright little girls; but James, his oldest child, was blind.

2. Mr. Hall was a good father, a good husband, a good neighbor, a good workman; but yet he had one great fault he would treat himself to a glass of gin after a hard day's work.

3. It was a great benefit to him, he thought. If he was tired, it rested him; if inclined to be lazy, it stirred him up; if hot, it cooled him; if cold, it heated him; if