be obeyed implicitly.  She says she wants us to love and trust her as a friend, and we do.  Out of school she seems as young as we do, for she is full of fun and likes us to have a good time.  She tries to make school pleasant to us, and a while ago she put a box on her desk, and said, when we had any questions to ask, or complaints to make, we might write them on a slip of paper and put it in that box, which was locked and had a hole in the top.  Sometimes she answers the questions publicly, and sometimes she writes them and puts them in the “letter-box.”  The scholar who has the best record for a month keeps the key the next month, and once a week opens the box and distributes the contents.  It is quite an honor to be “postmistress,” but no one can have it two months at a time.  She lets us make suggestions if we think of any improvements in the school, and sometimes adopts them.  Another of her plans is to allow five minutes at the end of each hour when we may whisper, but not talk out loud.  If we wish to speak to any one we can leave our seat and walk to them, if they are not near to us.  But any one who whispers, or communicates in any way at any other time, forfeits this chance.  I forgot to say that we put notes to each other in the letter-box.  We do like our little schoolma’am so much!—­Yours truly,

    ALLIE BERTRAM.

AS IDLE AS A BIRD.

It is not so very long since I heard a little girl say that she “wished she could only be as idle as a bird.”

Now, this was not a very lazy sort of wish, if she had but known it.  There are very few little girls, or boys,—­or grown-ups either, for the matter of that,—­who are as industrious as the birds.  How many people would be willing to begin their daily labors as early as the birds begin theirs—­at half-past three o’clock in the morning—­and keep on toiling away until after eight in the evening?

Think of it, my youngsters,—­almost eighteen hours of constant work!

And the birds do it willingly, too; for it is a labor of love to bring dainty bits to their hungry little ones and keep the home-nest snug and warm.

One pair of birds that had been patiently watched from the first to the last of their long, long day, made no less than four hundred and seventy-five trips, of about one hundred and fifty yards each, in search of food for their darling chicks!

As idle as a bird, indeed!—­with all that hunting, and fetching, and carrying, and feeding to do!

“OWN FIRST COUSINS.”

Talking of birds, would you ever have thought it?  The lovely and brilliant Bird of Paradise, I’m told, is “own first cousin” to the—­Crows.  And the Crows are not one bit ashamed to own the relationship!  Very condescending of them, isn’t it?

ORANGE GROVES ON ST. JOHN’S RIVER.

    Ocala, Marion County, Fla., 1877.