3. "Oh, no!" said the pink flowers, "we would rather stay outdoors, where we can look at the blue sky, the green grass, and the waving trees. By and by, we shall climb to the roof of the house, and peep into the sparrow's nest and see the young birds which are there.”

4. Just then a nursemaid came to the window with a sweet baby in her arms. He was like a morning-glory himself, he was so fair and pure. His eyes were as blue and bright as a summer cloud made radiant with sunbeams. And he smiled a tender, winning smile, and stretched out his fat, dimpled hands to the morning-glories.

5. "I am going in," said the white morning-glory vine. Then it began to creep through a crack in the windowframe, and in a week's time it hung in a lovely festoon from the curtain, and had thrown its slender stems around the marble statue of the little angel. And every day the nursemaid brought the baby to see the flowers; and he laughed, and clapped his hands, and said many pretty things to them in the sweet language of babyhood.

6. "Are you not sorry that you went in there?" said the purple flowers. "We have so many beautiful things out here. The bees and the butterflies come to see us, and the wind swings us merrily to and fro, and the sun smiles upon us every day."

"Oh, no!" answered the white flowers. "We are not at all sorry, for we too are very, very happy."

7. "But morning-glory vines should always live in a garden," said the pink blossoms.

"We do not think so," was the answer. "Beauty and grace are welcome everywhere. You have given your sweetness and freshness to the bees, the butterflies, the wind, the sun. We have given ours to a little child.

To such as enter this room, we seem a song of praise, a hymn of thanks-and we shall die content."

THE BLUEBELL.

1. There is a story I have heard-
A poet learned it from a bird,
And kept its music, every word—
A story of a dim ravine,

O'er which the towering tree-tops lean,
With one blue rift of sky between;
And there, two thousand years ago,
A little flower, as white as snow,
Swayed in the silence to and fro.

2. Day after day with longing eye,
The floweret watched the narrow sky,
And fleecy clouds that floated by.

And through the darkness, night by night,
One gleaming star would climb the height,
And cheer the lonely floweret's sight.
Thus, watching the blue heavens afar,
And the rising of its favorite star,
A slow change came-but not to mar;

3. For softly o'er its petals white
There crept a blueness like the light
Of skies upon a summer night;

And in its chalice, I am told,
The bonny bell was found to hold
A tiny star that gleamed like gold.
And bluebells of the Scottish land
Are loved on every foreign strand
Where stirs a Scottish heart or hand.

Now, little people, sweet and true,
I find a lesson here for you,
Writ in the floweret's bell of blue:
The patient child whose watchful eye
Strives after all things pure and high,
Shall take their image by and by.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PLANTS AND ANIMALS.

1. If you were asked, "What is the difference between a plant and an animal?" what answer do you think you would give? Your first thought might be that a plant has leaves and roots and flowers, which an animal has not. Yet that would not be correct; for there are many

plants which have neither roots nor leaves nor flowers, while there are some animals which seem to have all three.

2. Look up into the sky, and then down at the earth beneath your feet. It is easy enough, you think, to tell which is earth and which is sky; but if you live in the wide, open country, or near the sea, you will often find when you look far away to the place where sky and earth seem to meet, that this is a matter of some difficulty. You see only the thin blue haze, like smoke, which is the dividing line between the heavens and the earth. But just where the one ends and the other begins, you cannot tell.

3. Just so it is throughout all the world of Nature. You may look at a group of cows standing under the trees, or watch the merry crickets skipping about among the weeds, or catch a bee at his early drink in a morningglory bell, and you would laugh if any one should ask you whether you can tell an animal from a plant.

4. But suppose you turn aside from these familiar, everyday things, and study objects which you have to look at through a magnifying glass, and you will find many things that will puzzle you. You will find plants without roots, leaves, flowers, or seeds; and you will find animals without heads, legs, eyes, mouths, or stomachs.

5. Students of Nature are not satisfied with guessing, but they observe, day after day, the changes which take place in an object; and they see many things which most people would fail to see. And thus they have found that the real difference between plants and animals lies in what they do, and not in what they seem to be.

6. We now know that about one fourth of all the kinds of seaweed are animals. A few years ago all of them

were classed as plants; so, also, were the sponge and the coral. It was long supposed that the main difference between animals and plants was that the former could move about while the latter could not. But this distinction will not hold good.

7. How then are we to know whether a living object is a plant or an animal? Plants can live on inorganic matter; they have the power of changing earth and air and water into substances which enter into and become a part of themselves. Animals can live only on what plants have already turned from inorganic to vegetable matter. Animals, although they need some inorganic food, cannot live on it alone.

8. All the food that keeps our bodies strong, or makes them grow, was once in the vegetable form. No bird nor fish nor other animal could ever have lived on this earth, if the plants had not come first and fitted it for the dwelling place of a higher order of beings.

9. Plants are the true fairies that are forever working wonders around us. Their roots, like the elves, dig down into the earth and gather its treasures. Their leaves

spread their broad surfaces to the air and take in its riches; and out of what they have thus gathered they produce the beautiful flowers, the delicious fruits, and the golden grain.

10. Let us study more closely the way in which a plant grows. The root, with a little helmet on its head to keep it from being hurt, pushes itself down into the earth. If it finds no water or damp earth, it soon dies. If it finds water, it begins to suck it up and change it into sap. Besides the water, it takes up such parts of the soil as are dissolved in the water.