If little Charlie Lane had known this he would not have had such a cry the morning he went to school for the first time.  He thought his mother very cruel to make him go, and, I am sorry to say, not only cried before he started, but all the way to the school-house.  The Dominie took no notice of this, and Charlie soon found that school was not such a very dreadful place.  And there was the nice playtime in the middle of the day.  And, when school was out, the Dominie took him on his knee and gave him a big apple, and showed him a book full of bright pictures, and told him a story about every one of them.

You can see the little fellow on the Dominie’s lap, looking earnestly at a picture in the book; and the old man is pleased that the child is pleased.  The Dominie is sitting in his big chair, and his dinner-bag is hanging on the back of it.  On the black-board over his head you see little Charlie’s lesson for that day.  It is on the right, and consists of the letters A, B, C, which the child has been staring at until he knows them perfectly in any book that is given to him.  On the left, is a sum; and somebody has tried to draw an almanac sun on the lower part of the board.  Across the top the Dominie has written a copy.  You can read it plainly.  It was a favorite saying of his; and a very good one too.

Have we not, all of us, a great deal to make us happy?  What pleasure is it to you to go about with a cross or melancholy face?  Try to think of something pleasant, and call up a smile.  Put the ill-natured feelings out of your heart, and then the brightness will come to your face without further trouble.  If you have a hard task to do, being cross won’t help you along one bit.  Go to work at it with a will, and you will be surprised to find how soon it will be done.  Then, with a clear conscience and a glad heart, you can sit waiting for the welcome sound, “School’s out!”

NEST-BUILDERS.

“Birds in their little nests agree,” but they do not at all agree in their manner of building the said nests.

They have all sorts of ideas on this subject.  Nearly every species of bird has a nest peculiar to itself, and the variety is astonishing.  There are nests like cups, and nests like saucers; nests which are firmly fixed among the solid rocks, and nests which wave about on the ends of slender branches; nests which are perched on the very tops of the tallest trees, and nests which are hidden in the ground.  There are great nests, which will hold a bushel or two of eggs, and little bits of things, into which you could scarcely put half a dozen peas.

In mentioning some of these nests, it will be needless for us to say much of those with which we are all familiar.  In our rambles together we must try and see as many novelties as possible, for we may not always have the chance of wandering freely into any part of the world to which our fancy may lead us.  I remember a little girl who used to come to our house when I was a boy, and who never cared for anything at table that was not something of a novelty to her.  When offered potatoes, she would frankly say:  “No, thank you; I can get them at home.”