Mrs. J. P. Ballard sends us, in a letter, this pleasant story, which she knows to be true, and which may teach some of our little readers-not many, we hope, need it -a good lesson.

"TWENTY-THREE EGGS.

"At eight years old I was as wide awake, and saw as many things between daybreak and nine o'clock at night, as any boy in the country, and was withal fond of telling quite as much as I saw, and now and then a good deal more.

"My mother sometimes suspected me of great powers of exaggeration, but as, on looking into my statements, she could never detect me in a direct lie, I was little likely to receive the correction which I was often conscious of deserving. This came to me in an unexpected manner, and the way I was helped out of the worst and last falsehood I ever told has always been a mystery

"I was loitering in the kitchen one morning, where my mother was at work making tarts, when -tarts suggesting cake, and cake, eggs -she turned to me and said, 'I don't see as your new fangled chickens turn out any better than the old ones. We don't seem to have any more eggs.' "Here my mother touched a tender spot. I had bought the chickens with my own money, the positive assurance of their being magnificent layers.

and on

"Yes, they do,' I said, -not stopping to think what my hasty vindication might cost me, - -'yes, they do; they lay splendidly. I found a nest with ever so many eggs in it this morning.'

"Then why did n't you bring them in?'

"I had no basket, and then I forgot it; but there's a hole there, under the cow's rack, and I counted twenty-three eggs.'

"That was a 'stunner,' but my mother did not drop her rolling-pin, nor give any sign that she discredited my assertion. She only said quietly, 'Take a basket, Bridget, and go with Harry to the barn.'

"I took the basket, and marched out, half a rod ahead of Bridget, straight to the cow's rack. I did not expect to find anything, but I must go ahead till I had to stop; that was always my way. So

I went to the rack, when, sure enough, there was the hole; and, thrusting in my arm, I felt - an egg. I put it in the basket and tried again, another, and another, till twenty-three eggs had been taken from the wonderful hole. Just twentythree, and no more!

"Never was profounder astonishment in one little breast, and the worst of it was, it had to be kept there. It was a big charge of powder in a small rock. I was terribly afraid it would explode; but it did n't. I took the eggs to my mother, and went out whistling, my mother saying to herself, -dear soul!-'How foolish I was to doubt him!'

"Poor me! how I ached to confess the fiction for the sake of telling the stranger truth! I had not the courage to do this, but the effect on me of the amazing verification of my falsehood was never lost. I had been so strangely confronted face to face with my lie, as if the Evil One had whispered, 'Have it as you say!' that I determined it should be my last. And it was. I became strictly truthful, so noted, indeed, for exactness, that the time has at length come when I can safely tell the story of my twenty-three eggs."

Ned Sketchley. Aim at finish and style, as draws out his symbols. - Put very little trust in well as spirit, in your drawings. - Willy Wisp the floating personal paragraphs of newspapers; they are rarely correct. -Ruskin's "Elements of costs about two dollars. Drawing Scribner, Welford, & Co., of New York, can tell you all