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felon, whom you fondly hoped you had executed, is again within hail of you, and you can almost fancy there is scorn in the tone of his abominable hum. You, of course, watch his motions still more intently than before, but only by the ear, for you can never see him. We will suppose that you fancy he is aiming at your left hand; indeed, as you are almost sure of it, you wait till he has ceased his song, and then you give yourself another smack, which, I need not say, proves quite as fruitless as the first.

8. About this stage of the action you discover, to your horror, that you have been soundly bitten in one ear and in both heels, but when or how you cannot tell. These wounds, of course, put you into a fine rage, partly from the pain, and partly from the insidious manner in which they have been inflicted. Up you spring on your knees -not to pray, Heaven knows!-but to fight. You seize your horse's tail with spiteful rage, and after whisking it round and round, and cracking it in every corner of the bed, you feel pretty certain you must at last have demolished your friend.

9. In this unequal warfare you pass the livelong night, alternately scratching and cuffing yourself, fretting and fuming to no purpose, feverish, angry, sleepy, provoked, and wounded in twenty different places. At last, just as the long-expected day begins to dawn, you drop off, quite exhausted, into an unsatisfactory, heavy slumber, during which your triumphant enemy banquets upon your carcass at his convenient leisure. As the sun is rising, you awaken only to discover the bloated and satiated monster clinging to the top of your bed- an easy, but useless and inglorious prey.

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2. Sec. It is even so, sir. A courier arrived at the palace but an hour since with the intelligence. Columbus was driven by stress of weather to anchor in the Tagus. All Portugal is in a ferment of enthusiasm, and all Spain will be equally excited soon. The sensation is prodigious.

3. Don G. Oh, it is a trick! It must be a trick! 4. Sec. But he has brought home the proofs of his visit, gold and precious stones, strange plants and animals; and, above all, specimens of a new race of men, copper-colored, with straight hair.

5. Don G. Still I say, a trick! He has been coasting along the African shore, and there collected a few curiosities, which he is palming off for proofs of his pretended discovery.

6. Sec. It is a little singular that all his men should be leagued with him in keeping up so unprofitable a falsehood.

7. Don G. But 't is against reason, against common sense, that such a discovery should be made.

8. Sec. King John of Portugal has received him with royal magnificence, has listened to his accounts, and is persuaded that they are true.

9. Don G. We shall see, we shall see. Look you, sir, a plain matter-of-fact man, such as I, is not to be taken in by any such preposterous story. This vaunted discovery will turn out no discovery at all.

10. Sec. The king and queen have given orders for

preparations on the most magnificent scale for the reception of Columbus.

11. Don G. What delusion! Her Majesty is so credulous! A practical common-sense man, like myself, can find no points of sympathy in her nature.

12. Sec. The Indians on board the returned vessels are said to be unlike any known race of men.

13. Don G. Very unreliable all that! I take the common-sense view of the thing. I am a matter-of-fact man; and do you remember what I say, it will all turn out a trick! The crews may have been deceived. Columbus may have steered a southerly course instead of a westerly. Anything is probable, rather than that a coast to the westward of us has been discovered.

14. Sec. I saw the courier, who told me he had conversed with all the sailors; and they laughed at the suspicion that there could be any mistake about the discovery, or that any other than a westerly course had been steered.

15. Don G. Still I say, a trick! An unknown coast reached by steering west? Impossible! The earth a globe, and men standing with their heads down in space ? Folly! An ignorant sailor from Genoa in the right, and all our learned doctors and philosophers in the wrong? Nonsense! I'm a matter-of-fact man, sir. I will believe what I can see, and handle, and understand. But as for believing in the antipodes, or that the earth is round, or that Columbus has discovered land to the west-Ring the bell, sir; call my carriage; I will go to the palace and undeceive the king.

EXERCISE.

Write expressions equivalent to the following:
1. Columbus was driven by stress of weather.

2. The sensation is prodigious.

3. King John has received him with royal magnificence.

A

3

LESSON 47.

FROST-WORK.

LITTLE one sought me this morning,
Her blue eyes shining bright,

While over her cheeks the dimples

Were playing in changeful light.

2. "Come, come to my room," she whispered; "A curious thing is there;

A painter has been at work all night
In the cold and shivering air.

3. "He has made a beautiful castle,
Far up on a mountain high,

And a forest of old and stately trees,
With branches that touch the sky.

4. "He has made both towers and temples,
And all kinds of curious things;
You might fancy some were angels,
With their grand and shining wings.

5. "They are all on my window painted,
The strange and beautiful things!
And the morning sun above them
A rainbow beauty flings."

6. I went with the little prattler,
The mystical work to see;
And glorious in the shining sun
Was the delicate tracery.

7. For all night long the artist
Had silently wrought away,
And only put by his pencil
At the coming in of day;

8. Softly and stealthily toiling,

By the holy light of the stars,
And the light that streams like a glory
From heaven's crystal bars.

9. He had gone, as he came, in silence;
But his work was left behind,

Like a friend who sends his favors
By night to the good and the kind.

10. How often the silent seeker

For better things above,

Finds more than angel beauty
In the Saviour's grace and love!

11. And when lip and brow have faded
In the dust and gloom of death,
Their memories come to the living,
Evangels of love and faith.

12. Oh! teach me, beautiful frost-work,
Another lesson in life:-

The web that is woven by night-time,
In the morning with gems may be rife.

OFF

LESSON 48.

A MAN OVERBOARD.

FF the Azores we were overtaken by a series of severe squalls. We were preparing ourselves for the coming storm, when a man, who was coming down from the last reef, slipped as he stepped on the bulwarks, and went over backwards into the waves.

2. In a moment that most terrific of all cries at sea,

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