To sailors they are "Mother Carey's chickens," and their presence is dreaded, because with them generally come storms and bad weather. They revel in storms, and the fiercer the gale and the higher the waves, the more merry are they. This preference of the petrel is explained by the fact that he is more than half nocturnal in his habits, and greatly dislikes the glare of sunshine. But when black clouds and gloomy mists hang low over the ocean, the semi-darkness just suits him, and through it may he be seen skimming the angry billows many leagues from the nearest land.

The inhabitants of some of the outlying Scotch islands make a peculiar use of the young petrels, which are always as fat as b.u.t.ter, and much more easy to catch than the old birds. The young bird is caught, killed, and a wick is pa.s.sed through his body until it projects from the bill.

When this wick is lighted it gradually draws every drop of oil out of the well-supplied little reservoir, and thus a lamp is formed, very cheaply and easily, that lasts and gives a good light for the whole of a long winter's evening.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AT THE AGE OF TWELVE.]

SHAKESPEARE.

William Shakespeare was born at Stratford, on the Avon, April 23, 1564, and was baptized on the 26th. Two months after his birth the plague swept over the pleasant village, carrying off a large part of the inhabitants. The danger that hung over the marvellous infant pa.s.sed away, and he grew up healthy and strong. His mother, Mary Arden, inherited a large farm at Wilmecote, a mile from Stratford; and his father, John Shakespeare, who held several other pieces of land, was probably an active farmer, raising sheep, and perhaps cattle. The house in which it is said Shakespeare was born is still shown in Henley Street, Stratford--a plain building of timber and plaster, covered with the names of those who have come from every part of the world to visit the dark, narrow room made memorable by the poet's birth.

He had several younger brothers--Gilbert, Richard, Edmund, and a sister Joan--all of whom he aided in his prosperity. The family in Henley Street was a happy one; and the young Shakespeares and their sister probably wandered in the flowery fields around the Avon, or lived on the farm at Wilmecote, saw the cows milked, and the cattle pastured, and all the changes of rural life. Shakespeare lived among the flowers he describes so well; and in the fine park of Fulbroke, not far off, saw the magnificent oaks, the herds of deer, and the gay troops of huntsmen chasing the poor stag along the forest glade. He must have been a precocious boy, seeing everything around him even in childhood. He is described or painted in later life as having a fair, melancholy, sensitive face, his eyes apparently dark, his hair brown and flowing.

His disposition was gentle and benevolent; he won the love even of his foes.

As the son of a farmer he probably had little education. He went for several years to the grammar school at Stratford, and was then perhaps employed on his father's farm. Like Virgil, Horace, Burns, and many other poets, he grew up in the country. Nothing is certainly known of his youth. He was fond of rural sports, and amidst his early labors went no doubt to the country fairs, joined in the Christmas games and May-day dances, and probably when the Earl of Leicester gave the magnificent reception to Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, described in Scott's novel, Shakespeare was there among the spectators. He was then a boy of twelve.

He could enjoy the plays, games, the pomp and glitter, of that famous festival.

He must have read romances and tales early, like d.i.c.kens; he may have amused his little brothers and his sister Joan by repeating to them on winter evenings in the low room in Henley Street the story of the wild castle of Elsinore, or of the venerable Lear and the gentle Cordelia. He was all imagination, and precocious in knowledge; he must have studied when his companions played, and read everything that came in his way. At eighteen he fell in love and married Anne Hathaway, a young lady eight years older than himself. Before he was twenty-one he had three children to maintain, and went up to London to find employment. He remained in obscurity for some years; but at last appears, about 1590, the finest poet and dramatist of all ages.

Shakespeare pursued his career in London as author and theatrical manager for nearly twenty-five years. He was very industrious; he was prudent, but generous; he saved money, and grew wealthy. About 1612 or 1613 he returned to Stratford, where he lived in the best house of the little village, called "New Place." Here he gave a home to his father and mother, and provided liberally for his younger brothers. To his sister Joan he gave the house in Henley Street, which remained in the possession of her descendants until 1820. He may have looked forward to a long and honorable old age, but died in 1616, it is said, on the same day of the year on which he was born. His son Hamnet died long before him. He left two daughters.

His writings teach men to be kind and gentle.

MR. MARTIN'S LEG.

BY JIMMY BROWN.

I had a dreadful time after that accident with Mr. Martin's eye. He wrote a letter to father and said that "the conduct of that atrocious young ruffian was such," and that he hoped he would never have a son like me. As soon as father said "My son I want to see you up stairs bring me my new rattan cane," I knew what was going to happen. I will draw some veils over the terrible scene, and will only say that for the next week I did not feel able to hold a pen unless I stood up all the time.

Last week I got a beautiful dog. Father had gone away for a few days and I heard mother say that she wished she had a nice little dog to stay in the house and drive robbers away. The very next day a lovely dog that didn't belong to anybody came into our yard and I made a dog-house for him out of a barrel, and got some beefsteak out of the closet for him, and got a cat for him to chase, and made him comfortable. He is part bull-dog, and his ears and tail are gone and he hasn't but one eye and he's lame in one of his hind-legs and the hair has been scalded off part of him, and he's just lovely. If you saw him after a cat you'd say he was a perfect beauty. Mother won't let me bring him into the house, and says she never saw such a horrid brute, but some women haven't any taste about dogs anyway.

His name is Sitting Bull, though most of the time when he isn't chasing cats he's lying down. He knows pretty near everything. Some dogs know more than folks. Mr. Travers had a dog once that knew Chinese. Every time that dog heard a man speak Chinese he would lie down and howl and then he would get up and bite the man. You might talk English or French or Latin or German to him and he wouldn't pay any attention to it, but just say three words in Chinese and he'd take a piece out of you. Mr.

Travers says that once when he was a puppy a Chinaman tried to catch him for a stew; so whenever he heard anybody speak Chinese he remembered that time and went and bit the man to let him know that he didn't approve of the way Chinamen treated puppies. The dog never made a mistake but once. A man came to the house who had lost his pilate and couldn't speak plain, and the dog thought he was speaking Chinese and so he had his regular fit and bit the man worse than he had ever bit anybody before.

Sitting Bull don't know Chinese but Mr. Travers says he's a "specialist in cats," which means that he knows the whole science of cats. The very first night I let him loose he chased a cat up the pear-tree and he sat under that tree and danced around it and howled all night. The neighbors next door threw most all their things at him but they couldn't discourage him. I had to tie him up after breakfast and let the cat get down and run away before I let him loose again, or he'd have barked all summer.

The only trouble with him is that he can't see very well and keeps running against things. If he starts to run out of the gate he is just as likely to run head first into the fence, and when he chases a cat round a corner he will sometimes mistake a stick of wood, or the lawn-mower for the cat and try to shake it to death. This was the way he came to get me into trouble with Mr. Martin.

He hadn't been at our house for so long (Mr. Martin, I mean) that we all thought he never would come again. Father sometimes said that his friend Martin had been driven out of the house because my conduct was such and he expected I would separate him from all his friends. Of course I was sorry that father felt bad about it but if I was his age I would have friends that were made more substantial than Mr. Martin is.

Night before last I was out in the back yard with Sitting Bull looking for a stray cat that sometimes comes around the house after dark and steals the strawberries and takes the apples out of the cellar. At least I suppose it is this particular cat that steals the apples for the cook says a cat does it and we haven't any private cat of our own. After a while I saw the cat coming along by the side of the fence looking wicked enough to steal anything and to tell stories about it afterward. I was sitting on the ground holding Sitting Bull's head in my lap and telling him that I did wish he'd take to rat-hunting like Sam McGinnis's terrier, but no sooner had I seen the cat and whispered to Sitting Bull that she was in sight than he jumped up and went for her.

He chased her along the fence into the front yard where she made a dive under the front piazza. Sitting Bull came round the corner of the house just flying, and I close after him. It happened that Mr. Martin was at that identicular moment going up the steps of the piazza and Sitting Bull mistaking one of his legs for the cat jumped for it and had it in his teeth before I could say a word.

When that dog once gets hold of a thing there is no use in reasoning with him, for he won't listen to anything. Mr. Martin howled and said "Take him off my gracious the dog's mad," and I said "Come here sir.

Good dog. Leave him alone" but Sitting Bull hung on to the leg as if he was deaf and Mr. Martin hung on to the railing of the piazza and made twice as much noise as the dog. I didn't know whether I'd better run for the doctor or the police, but after shaking the leg for about a minute Sitting Bull gave it an awful pull and pulled it off just at the knee-joint. When I saw the dog rushing round the yard with the leg in his mouth I ran into the house and told Sue and begged her to cut a hole in the wall and hide me behind the plastering where the police couldn't find me. When she went down to help Mr. Martin she saw him just going out of the yard on a wheelbarrow with a man wheeling him on a broad grin.

If he ever comes to this house again I'm going to run away. It turns out that his leg was made of cork and I suppose the rest of him is either cork or gla.s.s. Some day he'll drop apart on our piazza then the whole blame will be put on me.

A MISHAP.

BY JOSEPHINE POLLARD.

A dear little fellow named Noah Had made up his mind that he'd go a-- Sailing alone In a boat of his own, For he was a champion rower.

This dear little fellow named Noah Hadn't gone very far before--oh! ah!-- His boat was upset, And he got very wet, Did this little numskull of a Noah.

CORN-STALK CATTLE.

BY FLORENCE E. TYNG.

Last winter my health gave out, and the doctor said I must go South.

What a mourning there was among our little boys at the thought of losing Aunt Kate and her "beautiful stories"!

Just before the train started, little Jamie begged to be held up to the car window to give me a good-by kiss. Poor little fellow! his eyes streamed with tears, and not even the promise of a pound of candy could console him.

I was not going to Florida, where fashionable invalids spend their winters, but to the home of an old friend of mine on an Alabama plantation. How glad I was to find that she too had a little boy! He was not much like the nephews I had left behind, but I soon found him to be a good-hearted, brave little lad.

His mamma and I were sitting one rainy morning with our work before a great wood fire, when Frankie and his bosom companion, Abe, a young darky, came in with an armful of long dry corn stalks, a handful of chicken feathers, and two kitchen knives.

"Now, Frankie, you are going to make a mess, so get some papers and put them down on the floor," said Frankie's mamma. Abe ran to get the papers, and very soon the two boys were down on their knees, peeling the stalks.

I noticed that the stalks were old and brittle, and that the boys preserved the hull. After watching them for some minutes, I began to make inquiries as to what the stalks were for.

"Dese is fur cattle," said Abe, grinning.

I then asked how they made cattle. Frankie did not seem communicative, so Abe again answered my question.

"Wa'al, we jest cuts 'em. If yer waits a minute I'll show yer."

He cut off a piece of the peeled stalk about four inches long, then split the hull into four pieces about a quarter of an inch wide and two inches long. He stuck two of these pieces near one end of the stalk for hind-legs, and the two others at a quarter of an inch from the other end for front ones. He then cut a piece of the stalk about an inch long for the head, a niche for the mouth, two pins for eyes, and narrow bits of hull for horns; another little strip of hull was stuck first into the head and then into the body to form the neck, a chicken feather put in for the tail, and the job was finished.

"Now, den," said Abe, triumphantly, holding it up, "don't yer see dat's a cow?"