The third now got out. He looked the personification of fasting; but he carried his nose very high, for he was a weather prophet. In his b.u.t.tonhole he wore a little bunch of violets, but they were very small.

"MARCH, MARCH!" the fourth pa.s.senger called after him, slapping him on the shoulder, "don't you smell something good? Make haste into the guard-room, they are feasting in there. I can smell it already! FORWARD, MASTER MARCH!"

But it was not true. The speaker only wanted to make an APRIL FOOL of him, for with that fun the fourth stranger generally began his career.

He looked very jovial, and did little work.

"If the world were only more settled!" said he; "but sometimes I'm obliged to be in a good humor, and sometimes a bad one. I can laugh or cry according to circ.u.mstances. I have my summer wardrobe in this box here, but it would be very foolish to put it on now!"

After him a lady stepped out of the coach. SHE CALLED HERSELF MISS MAY.

She wore a summer dress and overshoes. Her dress was light green, and there were anemones in her hair. She was so scented with wild thyme that it made the sentry sneeze.

"Your health, and G.o.d bless you!" was her greeting.

How pretty she was! and such a singer! Not a theater singer nor a ballad-singer; no, but a singer of the woods. For she wandered through the gay, green forest, and had a concert there for her own amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Now comes the young lady," said those in the coach; and out stepped a young dame, delicate, proud, and pretty. IT WAS MISTRESS JUNE. In her service people become lazy and fond of sleeping for hours. She gives a feast on the longest day of the year, that there may be time for her guests to partake of the numerous dishes at her table. Indeed, she keeps her own carriage, but still she travels by the mail-coach with the rest because she wishes to show that she is not proud.

But she was not without a protector; her younger brother, JULY, was with her. He was a plump, young fellow, clad in summer garments, and wearing a straw hat. He had very little luggage because it was so c.u.mbersome in the great heat. He had, however, swimming-trousers with him, which are nothing to carry.

Then came the mother herself, MADAME AUGUST, a wholesale dealer in fruit, proprietress of a large number of fish-ponds, and a land-cultivator. She was fat and warm, yet she could use her hands well, and would herself carry out food to the laborers in the field. After work, came the recreations, dancing and playing in the greenwood, and the "harvest home." She was a thorough housewife.

After her a man stepped out of the coach. He is a painter, a master of colors, and is NAMED SEPTEMBER. The forest on his arrival has to change its colors, and how beautiful are those he chooses! The woods glow with red, and gold, and brown. This great master painter can whistle like a blackbird. There he stood with his color-pot in his hand, and that was the whole of his luggage.

A landowner followed, who in the month for sowing seed attends to his ploughing and is fond of field sports. SQUIRE OCTOBER brought his dog and his gun with him, and had nuts in his game-bag.

"Crack! Crack!" He had a great deal of luggage, even a plough. He spoke of farming, but what he said could scarcely be heard for the coughing and sneezing of his neighbor.

It WAS NOVEMBER, who coughed violently as he got out. He had a cold, but he said he thought it would leave him when he went out woodcutting, for he had to supply wood to the whole parish. He spent his evenings making skates, for he knew, he said, that in a few weeks they would be needed.

At length the last pa.s.senger made her appearance,--OLD MOTHER DECEMBER!

The dame was very aged, but her eyes glistened like two stars. She carried on her arm a flower-pot, in which a little fir tree was growing.

"This tree I shall guard and cherish," she said, "that it may grow large by Christmas Eve, and reach from the floor to the ceiling, to be adorned with lighted candles, golden apples, and toys. I shall sit by the fireplace, and bring a story-book out of my pocket, and read aloud to all the little children. Then the toys on the tree will become alive, and the little waxen Angel at the top will spread out his wings of gold leaf, and fly down from his green perch. He will kiss every child in the room, yes, and all the little children who stand out in the street singing a carol about the 'Star of Bethlehem.'"

"Well, now the coach may drive away," said the sentry; "we will keep all the twelve months here with us."

"First let the twelve come to me," said the Captain on duty, "one after another. The pa.s.sports I will keep here, each of them for one month.

When that has pa.s.sed, I shall write the behavior of each stranger on his pa.s.sport. MR. JANUARY, have the goodness to come here."

And MR. JANUARY stepped forward.

When a year has pa.s.sed, I think I shall be able to tell you what the twelve pa.s.sengers have brought to you, to me, and to all of us. Just now I do not know, and probably even they do not know themselves, for we live in strange times.

LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

(FEBRUARY 12)

HE RESCUES THE BIRDS

BY NOAH BROOKS (ADAPTED)

Once, while riding through the country with some other lawyers, Lincoln was missed from the party, and was seen loitering near a thicket of wild plum trees where the men had stopped a short time before to water their horses.

"Where is Lincoln?" asked one of the lawyers.

"When I saw him last," answered another, "he had caught two young birds that the wind had blown out of their nest, and was hunting for the nest to put them back again."

As Lincoln joined them, the lawyers rallied him on his tender-heartedness, and he said:--

"I could not have slept unless I had restored those little birds to their mother."

LINCOLN AND THE LITTLE GIRL

BY CHARLES W. MOORES

In the old days, when Lincoln was one of the leading lawyers of the State, he noticed a little girl of ten who stood beside a trunk in front of her home crying bitterly. He stopped to learn what was wrong, and was told that she was about to miss a long-promised visit to Decatur because the wagon had not come for her.

"You needn't let that trouble you," was his cheering reply. "Just come along with me and we shall make it all right."

Lifting the trunk upon his shoulder, and taking the little girl by the hand, he went through the streets of Springfield, a half-mile to the railway station, put her and her trunk on the train, and sent her away with a happiness in her heart that is still there.

TRAINING FOR THE PRESIDENCY

BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN

"I meant to take good care of your book, Mr. Crawford," said the boy, "but I've damaged it a good deal without intending to, and now I want to make it right with you. What shall I do to make it good?"

"Why, what happened to it, Abe?" asked the rich farmer, as he took the copy of Weems's "Life of Washington" which he had lent young Lincoln, and looked at the stained leaves and warped binding. "It looks as if it had been out through all last night's storm. How came you to forget, and leave it out to soak?"

"It was this way, Mr. Crawford," replied Abe. "I sat up late to read it, and when I went to bed, I put it away carefully in my bookcase, as I call it, a little opening between two logs in the wall of our cabin. I dreamed about General Washington all night. When I woke up I took it out to read a page or two before I did the ch.o.r.es, and you can't imagine how I felt when I found it in this shape. It seems that the mud-daubing had got out of the weather side of that crack, and the rain must have dripped on it three or four hours before I took it out. I'm sorry, Mr.

Crawford, and want to fix it up with you, if you can tell me how, for I have not got money to pay for it."

"Well," said Mr. Crawford, "come and shuck corn three days, and the book 's yours."

Had Mr. Crawford told young Abraham Lincoln that he had fallen heir to a fortune the boy could hardly have felt more elated. Shuck corn only three days, and earn the book that told all about his greatest hero!

"I don't intend to shuck corn, split rails, and the like always," he told Mrs. Crawford, after he had read the volume. "I'm going to fit myself for a profession."