Nearly all of us have some comical peculiarity, and we would not want an animal in the house who would be sure, at some time, to expose us to laughter by his imitative powers.

So I am afraid that the Orang-outangs, intelligent as they are, will have to stay in the woods.

LITTLE BRIDGET’S BATH.

Little Bridget was a good girl and a pretty one, but she had ideas of her own.  She liked to study her lessons, to mind her mother, and to behave herself as a little girl should, but she did despise to be washed.  There was something about the very smell of soap and the touch of water which made her shrink and shiver, and she would rather have seen the doctor come to her with a teaspoonful of medicine than to have her Aunt Ann approach with a bowlful of water, a towel, and a great piece of soap.

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For a long time little Bridget believed that there was no escape from this terrible daily trial, but one bright morning, when she awoke very early, long before any one else in the house, she thought that it was too bad, when everything else was so happy,—­when the birds and butterflies were flying about so gayly in the early sunbeams, and the flowers were all so gay and bright, and smelling so sweet and contented, that she should have to lie there on her little bed until her Aunt Ann came with that horrible soap and towel!  She made up her mind!  She wouldn’t stand it; she would run away before she came to wash her.  For one morning she would be happy.

So up she jumped, and without stopping to dress herself, ran out among the birds and flowers.

She rambled along by the brook, where the sand felt so nice and soft to her bare feet; she wandered through the woods, where she found blackberries and wild strawberries, and beautiful ferns; and she wandered on and on, among the rocks and the trees, and over the grass and the flowers, until she sat down by a great tree to rest.  Then, without intending anything of the kind, she went fast asleep.

She had not slept more than five minutes, before along came a troop of fairies, and you may be assured that they were astonished enough to see a little girl lying fast asleep on the grass, at that time in the morning.

“Well, I never!” said the largest fairy, who was the Principal One.

“Nor I,” said the Next Biggest; “It’s little Bridget, and with such a dirty face!  Just look!  She has been eating blackberries and strawberries—­and raspberries too, for all I know; for you remember, brother, that a face dirtied with raspberries is very much like one dirtied with strawberries.”

“Very like, indeed, brother,” said the Principal One, “and look at her feet!  She’s been walking in the wet sand!”

“And her hands!” cried the Very Least, “what hands!  They’re all smeared over with mixtures of things.”

“Well,” said the Next Biggest, “she is certainly a dirty little girl, but what’s to be done?”