rate, be far enough from the cars to prevent them from touching us.  So out we got, and stood on the ends of the timbers, holding fast to the slender hand-rail.  And on came the train!  When the locomotive first touched the bridge we could feel the shock, and as it came rattling and grinding over the rails towards us—­coming right on to us, as it seemed—­our faces turned pale, you may well believe.

But the locomotive did not run off the track just at that exact spot where we were standing—­a catastrophe which, I believe, in the bottom of our hearts, every one of us feared.  It passed on, and the train came thundering after it.  How dreadfully close those cars did come to us!  How that bridge did shake and tremble in every timber; and how we trembled for fear we should be shaken off into the river so far below us!  And what an enormously long train it was!  I suppose that it took, really, but a very short time to pass, but it seemed to us as if there was no end to it at all, and as if it would never, never get entirely over that bridge!

But it did cross at last, and went rumbling away into the distance.

Then we three, almost too much frightened to speak to each other, crept under the rail and hurried over the bridge.

All that anxiety, that fright, that actual misery of mind, and positive danger of body, to save one cent apiece!

But we never saved any more money in that way.  When we crossed the river after that, we went over the toll-bridge, and we paid our pennies, like other sensible people.

Had it been positively necessary for us to have crossed that river, and had there been no other way for us to do it but to go over the railroad bridge, I think we might have been called brave boys, for the bridge was very high above the water, and a timid person would have been very likely to have been frightened when he looked down at his feet, and saw how easy it would be for him to make a misstep and go tumbling down between the timbers.

But, as there was no necessity or sufficient reason for our risking our lives in that manner, we were nothing more or less than three little fools!

It would be well if all boys or girls, to whom a hazardous feat presents itself, would ask themselves the question:  “Would it be a brave thing for me to do that, or would I be merely proving myself a simpleton?”

THE REAL KING OF BEASTS.

[Illustration:  A royal procession.]

For many centuries there has been a usurper on the throne of the Beasts.  That creature is the Lion.

But those who take an interest in the animal kingdom (and I am very sorry for those who do not) should force the Lion to take off the crown, put down the sceptre, and surrender the throne to the real King of Beasts—­the Elephant.