I can recollect a great many funny adventures connected with sliding down hill.  I don’t know that I ever laughed more in my life at any one time, than I did once at a feat of Jack Mason’s.  Jack was a courageous fellow—­one of the most daring boys in the whole school.  Some thirty or forty of us were one bright Saturday afternoon sliding down a fine hill, with a good level valley at its foot, when Jack challenged the boys to go down the other side, which was a great deal steeper, and which had an immense drift of snow at the bottom.  No one dared to do it.  We all thought it would be rather too serious business.  Jack surveyed the ground for a few minutes, and screwed his courage up to the highest point.  “I am going down,” said he.  We tried to dissuade him, but it was of no use.  When Jack had made up his mind, you might as well attempt to turn the course of the north wind as to turn him.  The words were no sooner out of his mouth, than down he went, like an arrow.  We trembled for him, and held our breath almost, as we watched his sled; for it used to be a proverb with us, that Jack would break his neck one of these days, and we were not without our fears that the day had come.

Down went Jack on his sled, and in a few moments he was plunged in the snow bank out of sight.  We all ran down to dig him out, scarcely daring to hope we should find him alive.  We worked like beavers for a considerable time, and found nothing of the poor adventurer.  At last, more than a rod from where he entered the bank, up popped Jack, as white with snow as if he had been into a flour barrel, tugging his sled after him, and grinning like a right merry fellow, as he was.  Take it all in all, it was one of the most laughable sights I ever saw; and now as I write, and a sort of a daguerreotype likeness of Jack, just emerging, like a ghost, from that snow bank, comes up to my mind, I have to stop and laugh almost as heartily as I did at the scene itself, when it occurred.

A GARDEN OVERRUN WITH WEEDS.

“Father, I don’t like to go to school,” said Harry Williams, one morning.  “I wish you would let me always stay at home.  Charles Parker’s father don’t make him go to school.”

Mr Williams took his little boy by the hand, and said kindly to him, “Come, my son, I want to show you something in the garden.”

Harry walked into the garden with his father, who led him along until they came to a bed in which peas were growing, the vines supported by thin branches that had been placed in the ground.  Not a weed was to be seen about their roots, nor even disfiguring the walk around the bed in which they had been planted.

“See how beautifully these peas are growing, my son,” said Mr Williams.  “How clean and healthy the vines look.  We shall have an abundant crop.  Now let me show you the vines in Mr Parker’s garden.  We can look at them through a great hole in his fence.”

Mr Williams then led Harry through the garden gate and across the road, to look at Mr Parker’s pea vines through the hole in the fence.  The bed in which they were growing was near to the road; so they had no difficulty in seeing it.  After looking into the garden for a few moments, Mr Williams said—­