Alike this quick succession prove, Sickness will change the roseate hue, The smoothness of the cheeks. But as that fragrant myrtle wreath LESSON XXIV. Now, my dear children, take your tea, and, at the same time your supper; because you know that your mother and I do not approve of eating animal food more than once in each day; and that we think three full meals a day quite sufficient for nourishment and health. There is a plate of strawberries, which will be a pleasant accompaniment to your bread and butter. The strawberry is a very wholesome fruit, which grows and ripens well in our climate. Formerly, good gardeners used to place layers of clean reed or straw between the fruit when ripening and the earth, to prevent its being bruised and soiled, and with the idea that the straw retained the heat of the sun-beams longer than the ground, and diffused it more equally round every part of the berries. Thence, it is supposed, was derived the name of Strawberry. There are various kinds of strawberries, some of which are very large, but none have a finer flavour than the small sort which grows wild in our woods, and on sloping sides of hills. These are called the Alpine strawberries, because they grow in different parts of the vast chains of the Alps. Raspberries, which have so agreeable a taste and odour, are a cultivated kind of the blackberries which you see in the hedges. The raspberry plants of Canada, and of Pennsylvania in North America, bear very pretty blossoms of a beautiful purple violet colour. It is said that the only fruits which are indigenous to our country, that is, grow naturally in it, are the wild apple, called crab, and the sloe, or wild plumb; both which have a sharp, rough, and disagreeable taste. Currants, gooseberries, apples, pears, we owe almost entirely to other countries. Peaches, and nectarines, came originally from Persia; the apricot, from Armenia. Grapes seldom ripen properly in the open air, in our climate. If you have eaten as much as you like, and drank your cup of milk and water, which is your tea, we will walk as far as the blacksmith's house, as I wish to give him some directions about mending our locks and bolts, and shoeing my horse Oh, I see that he is at work yet. He is an honest, industrious, and sober man, who maintains his wife and three children by his labour. He is, therefore, a respectable man; for every man who does his duty, in whatever rank of life he may be, is respectable. A rich man is not respectable, merely because he is rich; but he is so, when he makes a right use of his wealth. The man who possesses great riches has many important obligations resting upon him; and many temptations to that which is wrong attack him. If he faithfully discharge the former, and steadily resist the latter, he is then deserving of all respect and esteem. Take The smith is in the very act of forging, and forming into some particular shape, a piece of iron, which he has just taken red hot from the fire with the tongs he holds in his left hand. Now he turns the iron, and beats it with that heavy hammer. See how the sparks fly about! care of your eyes! That block of iron upon which he is hammering is called the anvil. Sometimes, when the iron bar is large, one man turns it round, while three or four men strike upon it with their hammers, in exact time, so as not to hurt one another's hands and arms. There is another method of forging pieces of iron that require to be acted upon by a force greater than that of a man's arms. Several very heavy hammer's, called sledge hammers, are moved up and down by the power of a water-mill; under the strokes of these, men present the lumps of iron, which are held up at one end by the anvils, and at the other by iron chains fastened to the ceiling of the forge. This method is employed in the largest works, such as the making anchors, which sometimes weigh many thousand pounds. The forge is a sort of furnace intended for the heating of metals so much as to render them malleable, that is capable of being beaten into any form. The back of the forge is built upright to the ceiling; and, over the fire-grate, is inclosed with what is called a hovel, or a funnel, which opens into the chimney to carry off the smoke. In the back of the forge, against the fire-place, is a thick iron plate, with a pipe to receive the nose of a bellows. The bellows is behind the forge, and is worked by a string or chain fastened to it, called a rocker. One of the boards of the bellows is fixed, and by drawing down the handle of the rocker the moveable board rises, and by means of a weight on the top of the upper board, sinks again. By this alternate motion a current of air is directed upon the fire, so as to increase it to what degree of heat may be wanted. In front of the forge, but a little below it, is a trough of water to wet the coals from time to time, and for cooling the tongs, which sometimes grows too hot for the smith to grasp. The other tools of the smith's workshop are files to saw through, or smooth pieces of metal; punches, or pointed instruments, to bore holes; a vice, or kind of very strong pincers, for holding things fast, fastened to an immoveable bench; the anvil and block. Those smiths who perform work less rough, and polish their work to a consider. able degree of nicety, and include bell-hanging in their business, are called white smiths, or bright smiths. There are other smiths who are employed principally in the making of locks and keys. N The several degrees of heat given by smiths to their material, the iron, are called by different names. That which is used when the iron has already acquired its form and size, but wants hammering only to smooth and fit it for the file, is called the blood-red heat. The heat which is applied to forge iron into size and shape, is called white heat. While that which is required, when two pieces of iron are to be united end to end, is named welding heat. The uppermost surface of the anvil, on which the smith hammers his iron, must be very flat and smooth, and so hard, that no file can touch it. At one end of the anvil is a hole, in which may be placed a strong steel chisel, or a spike; on this, a piece of red hot iron being laid, may be cut in two by a single stroke of the hammer. Great quantities of iron are imported from Sweden and North America in large pieces, called pigs, or in bars. The evening is beginning to close in, and the dew is falling, so I think we had better turn towards home, without extending our walk any farther. Look at the swallows skimming over the surface of our large pond. They are flying about so quickly, and in such different directions, hunting for flies and insects, which are their proper food, and by destroying multitudes of them, they are of great service to man; for those insects would otherwise increase so fast as to become quite a nuisance. The bills of the swallows open very wide, so |