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When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;

When young and old in circle

Around the firebrands close;
When the girls are weaving baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows;

When the goodman mends his armor,
And trims his helmet's plume;
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom,-
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,

How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

NEW ENGLAND WEATHER

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

NOTE TO THE PUPIL. - Samuel L. Clemens, generally known as "Mark Twain," is one of the greatest of American humorists. He is most widely known as the author of “Innocents Abroad” and “Roughing It," but he has been a very prolific as well as popular writer. "Old Times on the Mississippi," "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn,” "Prince and Pauper," "The Yankee at the Court of King Arthur,” "Pudd'nhead Wilson," and "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc" are books that many thousands have read with delight. As a lecturer Mr. Clemens has been as widely and favorably known as for his writings. He has lectured in all parts of this country, and in England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India. His works have been translated into several languages. He was born in Missouri in 1835.

I

DON'T know who makes New England weather; but I

think it must be raw apprentices in the weather clerk's factory, who experiment and learn how in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.

There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there, always attending strictly to business, always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in the spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.

It was I that made the fame and fortune of the man who had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world, and get specimens from all climes. I said, "Don't you do it: you come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity.

Well, he came and he made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he confessed he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity, well, after he had picked out and discarded all that were blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; weather to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor.

"Old Probabilities" has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the papers, and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific coast, down

South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region; see him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England. He can't any more tell that than he can tell how many presidents of the United States there are going to be.

Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something about like this: "Probably northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping around. from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning." Then he jots down this postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents: "But it is possible that the program may be wholly changed in the mean time."

Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of weather, a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first.

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You fix up for the drought: you leave your umbrella in the house, and sally out with your sprinkling pot, and ten to one you get drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due: you stand from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and, the first thing you know, you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments, but they can't be helped.

Now, as to the size of the weather in New England lengthways I mean. It is utterly disproportionate to the size of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can hold, you will see that New England weather sticking out beyond the edges, and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring states. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather.

I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the

New England weather, but. I will give only a single specimen. I like to hear the rain on a tin roof; so I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on the tin? No, sir; it skips it every time.

I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather; no language could do it justice. But after all there are at least one or two things about that weather which we residents would not like to part with.

If we had not our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries- the ice storm; when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top, ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; every bough and twig is strung with ice beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white like the Shah of Persia's diamond piume.

Then the wind waves the branches; and the sun comes out, and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms, that glow and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity, from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold; the tree becomes a sparkling fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence!

UNION AND LIBERTY

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

LAG of the heroes who left us their glory,

FLAG

Borne through their battlefields' thunder and flame,

Blazoned in song and illumined in story,

Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame!

Up with our banner bright,

Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation's cry,

UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE!

Light of our firmament, guide of our nation,
Pride of her children, and honored afar,
Let the wide beams of thy full constellation
Scatter each cloud that would darken a star!
Up with our banner bright, etc.

Empire unsceptered! what foe shall assail thee,
Bearing the standard of Liberty's van?
Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee,
Striving with men for the birthright of man!
Up with our banner bright, etc.

Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted,

Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw,

Then with the arms of thy millions united,

Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law!

Up with our banner bright, etc.

Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us,
Trusting thee always, through shadow and sun!

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