“Christopher.  Go into the garret and stay till I call you.  I’ll teach you not to take what doesn’t belong to you, even to give away.”

“Father!” beseechingly said Crip’s mother, “it is the boy’s birthday.”

“Go to the garret!” said Mr. Allen.

Crip went, and he was having the dismal time of it referred to in the beginning of this story.  Poor little chap!  He stayed up there all the morning, his mother’s heart bleeding for him, and his sisters saying in their hearts, “Father’s awful cruel.”  It did seem so, but Mr. Christopher Allen, the nation-known shipping merchant, said, fifty years later, when relating the story to a party of friends on board one of his fine steamships: 

“That severe punishment was the greatest kindness my father ever bestowed on my boyhood.  Why, a hundred times in my life, when under the power of a great temptation to use money in my hands that did not belong to me, even for the best and highest uses, and when I knew that I could replace it, I have been saved by the power of the stern, hard words, the cold, flashing eyes, and the day in the garret.  Yes, yes, father was right.  I ought to have taken off my own shoes, and gone without any, to give to Jo Jay.  That was his idea of giving.”

[Illustration]

WHAT HAPPENED.

BY HOWELL FOSTER.

  A very respectable Kangaroo
  Died week before last in Timbuctoo;
  A remarkable accident happened to him: 
  He was hung head down from a banyan-limb. 
  The Royal Lion made proclamation
  For a day of fasting and lamentation,
  Which led to a curious demonstration: 
  The Elephant acted as if he were drunk—­
  He stood on his head, he trod on his trunk;
  An over-sensitive she-Gorilla
  Declared that the shock would surely kill her;
  A frisky, gay and frolicsome Ape
  Tied up his tail with a yard of crape;
  The Donkey wiped his eyes with his ears;
  The Crocodile shed a bucket of tears;
  The Rhinoceros gored a young Giraffe
  Who had the very bad taste to laugh;
  The Hippopotamus puffed and blew,
  To show his respect for the Kangaroo;
  And a sad but indignant Chimpanzee
  Gnawed all the bark from the banyan-tree.

DRIFTED INTO PORT.

BY EDWIN HODDER.

CHAPTER I.

THE BOYS OF BLACKROCK SCHOOL.

Dr. Brier considered himself the principal of Blackrock School, but the boys in that establishment often used to say to each other that Mrs. Brier was really the master.

Not that she intruded into any sphere which did not belong to her, but she took such a deep interest in the school that she had the welfare of every boy at heart, and Dr. Brier was one of those amiable men who never act except in concert with their wives, and he had, moreover, good sense enough to see that oftentimes her judgment was better than his own.