All day long they stand here under the water, half asleep, sometimes giving a loud grunt or snore, and sometimes, I am sorry to say, tipping over a canoe which happens to float over their heads.  But at night, when men are asleep, the great beasts come up out of the river and eat the short, sweet grass upon the shore, and look about to see the world a little.  Oh, what mighty beasts!  Men are so small and weak beside them.  And yet, because the mind of man is so much above theirs, he can rule them; for God made man to be king of the whole earth, and greater than all.

All these wonderful things the men have seen, and Manenko listens to their stories until the moon is high and the stars have almost faded in her light.  Then her father and Zungo come home, bringing the antelope and buffalo meat, too tired to tell their story until the next day.  So, after eating supper, they are all soon asleep upon the mats which form their beds.  It is a hard kind of bed, but a good one, if you don’t have too many mice for bedfellows.  A little bright-eyed mouse is a pretty creature, but one doesn’t care to sleep with him.

These are simple, happy people; they live out of doors most of the time, and they love the sunshine, the rain, and the wind.  They have plenty to eat,—­the pounded corn, milk and honey, and scarlet beans, and the hunters bring meat, and soon it will be time for the wild water-birds to come flocking down the river,—­white pelicans and brown ducks, and hundreds of smaller birds that chase the skimming flies over the water.

If Manenko could read, she would be sorry that she has no books; and if she knew what dolls are, she might be longing every day for a beautiful wax doll, with curling hair, and eyes to open and shut.  But these are things of which she knows nothing at all, and she is happy enough in watching the hornets building their hanging nests on the branches of the trees, cutting the small sticks of sugar-cane, or following the honey-bird’s call.

If the children who have books would oftener leave them, and study the wonders of the things about them,—­of the birds, the plants, the curious creatures that live and work on the land and in the air and water,—­it would be better for them.  Try it, dear children; open your eyes and look into the ways and forms of life in the midst of which God has placed you, and get acquainted with them, till you feel that they, too, are your brothers and sisters, and God your Father and theirs.

LOUISE, THE CHILD OF THE BEAUTIFUL RIVER RHINE.

Have you heard of the beautiful River Rhine—­how at first it hides, a little brook among the mountains and dark forests, and then steals out into the sunshine, and leaps down the mountain-side, and hurries away to the sea, growing larger and stronger as it runs, curling and eddying among the rocks, and sweeping between the high hills where the grape-vines grow and the solemn old castles stand?