16. "You have been my best scholar this year; I will give you one more opportunity to win the medal, and at the same time give the other boys the same opportunity. Next week I will have another examination, and I will keep the list of questions under stricter care. My boy," he added, earnestly, taking his hand, "whether you lose or win the prize, I shall always respect you for this evening's work.”

17. The boys wondered, and more than one grumbled, when Mr. Wilbur announced that, owing to a recentlydiscovered irregularity in the last examination, there would be another one the following week, with a new list of questions.

18. Thomas studied hard and honestly won the prize, greatly to the delight of his brothers and the gratification of his parents.

19. While to others the gold medal was a proud badge of honor, to Thomas it was a constant reminder of the suffering he endured and the deep humiliation he experienced when he allowed deceit to govern him, even for one month.

S. ANNA FROST.

XXI. THE CROW AND THE FOX.

1. Upon an oak-tree sat a crow,

And picked a pilfered piece of cheese:
A fox was passing down below,
And gazing up among the trees.

2. He happened thus to see the bird;

And when the piece of cheese he spied,

A method to his mind occurred

To gain it, which at once he tried.

3. "O, what a lovely bird!" he said;

"What ebon plumage, thick and sleek! How rare a form! how fine a head!

What pointed claws, and glossy beak!

4. O, with such beauty, what a voice
That paragon must surely own!
"Twould make my very heart rejoice
To listen to its charming tone."

5. He ceased; but still with steadfast gaze
Bent upward stood a little while,
As if in rapture and amaze.

The silly crow believed the guile,

6. And fain would prove how sweet her note
(She might have thought it sweet, no doubt);
Her bill she opened, and her throat
A grating croak or two gave out.

7. But 'mid her musical display

She dropped the lump of cheese, when lo! To her unspeakable dismay,

'Twas swallowed by the fox below.

8. We should not heed what flatterers say,
Unless their price we wish to pay.

XXII.-HOW DOES THE STONE GET INTO OLD TEA-KETTLES?

1. A long time ago—more than two hundred years one of the great men of Europe thought he had found a way of making stone. He had noticed that in old teakettles there was always a crust of stone about the sides and bottoms, and he felt sure it was made of water.

2. If you will look into any old tea-kettle you will notice the same thing, and it may be that you will think as that man did. He thought that the water by boiling had been changed into stone; for said he, "there was no stone in the kettle when new;" and, as none had been put into it, he was sure that it had been made out of the water.

3. To prove that his conclusion was right, he took clear, fresh water from a spring and boiled it in a clean, new kettle, and, sure enough, there was the stone in it just as he expected it would be.

4. I should not wonder if some of you would laugh at that great man's notions; but, perhaps, in two hundred years from now, somebody's children will laugh at us for what we think we know.

5. But where does the stone come from if it is not made out of the water? I suppose this is what you would like to know, and if you will give me your attention I think you will be able to answer the question yourselves.

After a

6. Put a little salt into a basin of water. little while you will see no salt in it, but all of the water will taste salty. The salt is so nearly the color of the water that the eye can not detect the very little change that the salt gives to it, and it is divided into such small particles that they float all through the water,-hundreds of them are in every drop, so that we can not taste the water without tasting the salt also.

7. If you had put indigo into the water, instead of salt, every drop of the water would have been bluish, because it would have held many particles of indigo, which is blue. This shows you into what very small pieces the water breaks the salt.

8. It breaks or separates many other substances into just as small pieces. A little sugar will sweeten a large

ACHERS

TA CLARA COUN

LIBR

THE FOURTH READER.

quantity of water, and a little milk will make it all white. The sap or juice of the sugar cane or the sugar maple is simply water with fine particles of sugar in it. We get them out by boiling away the water. And so we get the salt out of our salt water.

9. The water goes away in the form of vapor or steam, and leaves the salt in the vessel. If you had weighed the salt before putting it into the water, you would, on weighing it again, have found it all there.

10. If you had weighed the water before you put the salt into it, and had caught the steam and held it till it quieted down into water again, you would have found, on weighing that, that no water had been lost; and you would have found, also, that it did not taste of the salt.

11. There is a great deal of salt in the ground. There are many other things besides salt in the ground that water will separate into small pieces, so small that they will mix all through it. When the rain comes, it sinks into the ground and picks into particles many things on the way.

12. These particles the water takes along with it, and when it comes bubbling up from the spring, and runs off in little brooks into rivers and ponds and lakes and oceans, it still holds the little particles of salt, or stone, or whatever they may be; for they can not get away without help, and then they do not go away, it is only the water that goes off.

13. When the salt water was boiled away, what be came of the salt? It sunk to the bottom of the vessel. When water that is full of particles of stone boils away, what becomes of the stone?

14. I am sure you can now tell where the stone comes from that is found in the bottoms of old tea-kettles, and know that the water does not turn into stone.

that

you

But you may ask, "Does water pick stones into particles so fine that they float in it?"

15. Yes; water picks to pieces, or dissolves, almost every thing. Salt and sugar, and many other things, dissolve nearly as soon as the water touches them; but it takes a long time to get many particles off from

stone.

This

16. What forces the water to leave the particles of matter gathered from the earth? It is heat. In what form does it leave? In the form of steam or vapor. vapor goes up into the air. There we call it clouds. 17. The clouds are blown by the wind into the cold; then they come back to the earth in the dew-drops and the rain, and hide themselves in the ground as before, and begin once more to gather little particles from it to carry into the ponds and oceans, to be again taken up by the heat of the sun, and by the wind to be driven away to water the earth, and to cause the hearts of men to be gladdened with abundant harvests.

18. Not a drop of water, not a particle of matter, is lost or gained by this continual change. But how is it with the little ponds, and the lakes and the oceans? The vapor that rises from them leaves the particles of matter that their waters contained to sink, or to float in close union through the remaining mass. In time, with no counteracting influences, these particles of matter thus left would fill the ponds and lakes, and even the oceans themselves, to the line of the streams.

19. From what I have said, can you not understand why the water of the ocean is salt; why we have salt springs, sulphur springs and mineral springs of various kinds; and why the waters in different springs and wells are unlike, as well as how the stone gets into the old teakettles, "if it is not made out of water?"