and he burned with a desire to have them properly gathered, and to assist in that work himself.  Accordingly, he was just about to reach for a pie and a jew’s-harp, by way of beginning, when he found that this was made impossible, by the fact of himself having been suddenly and incomprehensibly changed to a huge water-melon.  Over him grew one of the largest bushes, from whose branches depended seven roasted ’possums.  It was some consolation to look at them, and imagine how good they would taste if he only could taste them.  Presently a little gingerbread bird flew down and began to peck at him, and say, “Git up, Sam!  You Sam!  Sam!”

He woke up, and found that the wonderful field had vanished, and that he was lying under the old pecan-tree instead of the ’possum-bush; and there was his mother shouting in his ear: 

“Sam! don’t you heah me, you lazy—­S-a-m! Git up dis minnit an’ go to de well for a bucket ob water, sah, foah I whoop you!”

Pumble sat up and stared.

“Why, mammy,” said Sam, “you tol’ me I needn’t do no work, kase it’s my buff-day.”

“I’s ben countin’ it up ag’in,” said Aunt Phillis, “an’ foun’ out where I made a mis-figger, de fust time, and tallied wrong altogedder.  ‘Cordin’ to de c’rect calkilation, yo’ buff-day was one day las’ month. WALK arter dat water!”

WAIT

BY DORA READ GOODALE.

  When the icy snow is deep,
    Covering the frozen land,
  Do the little flowerets peep
    To be crushed by Winter’s hand?

  No, they wait for brighter days,
    Wait for bees and butterflies;
  Then their dainty heads they raise
    To the sunny, sunny skies.

  When the cruel north winds sigh,
    When ’tis cold with wind and rain,
  Do the birdies homeward fly
    Only to go back again?

  No, they wait for spring to come,
    Wait for gladsome sun and showers;
  Then they seek their northern home,
    Seek its leafy, fragrant bowers.

  Trustful as the birds and flowers,
    Tho’ our spring of joy be late,
  Tho’ we long for brighter hours,
    We must ever learn to wait.

THE STORY OF MAY-DAY.

BY OLIVE THORNE.

Alas, children! the world is growing old.  Not that dear old Mother Earth begins to show her six thousand (more or less) years, by stiff joints and clumsy movements, by clinging to her winter’s rest and her warm coverlet of snow, forgetting to push up the blue-eyed violets in the spring, or neglecting to unpack the fresh green robes of the trees.  No, indeed!  The blessed mother spins around the sun as gayly as she did in her first year.  She rises from her winter sleep fresh and young as ever.  Every new violet is as exquisitely tinted, as sweetly scented, as its predecessors of a thousand years ago.  Each new maple-leaf opens as delicate and lovely as the first one that ever came out of its tightly packed bud in the spring.  Mother Nature never grows old.