DOMESTIC ECONOMY.

A Munson - street man, being told that there were several pieces of tin which needed mending, conceived the idea of getting the iron and solder and doing the mending himself. His wife, filled with vague forebodings perhaps, said that the expense was such a trifle that it would hardly pay to do it one's self, to which he responded: "I'll admit that, in this one instance, it would not pay, but there is something in want of repair every little while, and if I have the tools here for fixing it we are saved just so much expense right along. It may not be much in the course of a year, but every little helps, and in time the total amounts to a nice little lump. We don't want the Astors lugging off all the money in the country." He got the iron, one dollar and fifty cents' worth of solder and ten cents' worth of rosin. He came home with these things and went into the kitchen, looking so proud and happy that his wife would have been glad he got them were it not for an overpowering dread of an impending muss. He called for the articles needing repair. His wife brought out a pan.

"Where's the rest? Bring 'em all out, an' let me make one job of 'em while I'm about it."

He got them all and seemed to be disappointed that there were no more of them. He pushed the iron into the fire, got a milk pan inverted on his knees, and with the solder in his hand, waited for the right heat.

"That iron only cost a dollar, and it'll never wear out, and there's enough solder in this piece to do twenty-five dollars' worth of mending," he explained to his wife.

Pretty soon the iron was at right heat, he judged. He rubbed the rosin about the hole which was to be repaired, and held the stick of solder over it, and carefully applied the iron. It was an intensely interesting mo

ment. His wife watched him with feverish interest. He said, speaking laboriously, as he applied the iron:

"The only-thing-I-regret-about-it-is-that-I-didn't-think

of-getting-this-before-we"

Then ascended through that ceiling, and up into the very vault of heaven, the awfullest yell that woman ever heard, and the same instant the soldering iron flew across the stove, the pan went clattering across the floor, and the bar of solder struck the wall with such force as to smash through both the plaster and lath. And be fore her horrified gaze danced her husband in an ecstasy of agony, sobbing, screaming and holding on to his left leg as desperately as if it were made of gold and studded with diamonds.

"Get the camphor, why don't you?" he yelled. "Send for the doctor. Oh, oh, I'm a dead man," he shouted.

Just then his gaze rested on the soldering iron. In an instant he caught it up and hurled it through the window, without the preliminary of raising the sash.

It was some little time before the thoroughly frightened and confused woman learned that some of the molten solder had run through the hole in the pan and on his leg, although she knew from the first that something of an unusual nature had occurred. She didn't send for the doctor. She made and applied the poultices herself to save expense. She said:

"We don't want the Astors lugging off all the money in the country."

-Danbury News.

PRINCE'S FEATHER.-MARY E. BRADLEY.

I sat at work one summer day,

It was breezy August weather,

And my little boy ran in from his play,
With a bright red prince's feather.
"Make me a cocked-hat, mother dear,"
He cried, "and put this in it;

Dick and Charlie are coming here,
And I want it done in a minute!"

UT

It was but one little boy I had,

And I dearly loved to please him;
When such a trifle would make him glad,
Be sure I did not tease him.

I dropped my work with a merry heart,
And Willie and I together,-
We made the cocked-hat gay and smart,
With its plume of prince's feather.

I set it firm on his bonny head,

Where the yellow curls were dancing,

I kissed his cheeks that were rosy red,
And his mouth where smiles were glancing; ·
Then off he ran, the beautiful boy!

My eager eyes ran after,

And my heart brimmed over with loving joy, At the ring of his happy laughter.

Back to their work my fingers flew,

I was sewing a frock for Willie,--
A little white frock with a band of blue,
That would make him look like a lily,
For he was fair as a flower, with eyes
Of the real heavenly color;

They were like the blue of the August skies,
And only the least bit duller.

I never guessed when he ran from me,

With his laugh out-ringing cheerly,
That it was the last time I should see
Those blue eyes loved so dearly.

I sat at my work, and I sang aloud
From a glad heart overflowing,
Nor ever dreamed it was Willie's shroud
That I was so busy sewing.

I folded the frock away complete,
And I had no thought of sorrow,

But only that Willie would look so sweet
When I dressed him in it to-morrow.

And down to the garden gate I ran,
For I thought I heard them drumming,

To see if perhaps my little man,

And Charlie and Dick were coming.

Some one spoke as I reached the gate

(He was Charlie's grown-up brother),

"Wait!" he said in a whisper, "wait!
We must break it to his mother!"
66 Break it-WHAT?" My ears were quick,
And I shrieked out wild and shrilly,
"What is the matter with Charlie and Dick?
What have you done with my Willie?"

The boys shrank frightened away at that,
And huddled closer together;

But one of them showed me the little cocked-hat,
With the wilted prince's feather.

"What does this mean? Is Willie dead?" He began to tremble and shiver:

"We were skipping stones," with a gasp he said, "And Willie-fell in the river!"

I asked no more. They brought him home-
My Willie! my little Willie !

His curls all tangled and wet with foam,
His white face set so stilly.

I combed the curls, though my eyes were dim,
And my heart was sick with sorrow;

And the little frock I made for him

He wore indeed on the morrow.

Somewhere, carefully laid away,

Through summer and winter weather,
I keep the hat that he wore that day,
And the bit of prince's feather.

It is only dust that was once a flower,
But there never will bloom another
In sun or shower, that will have such power
To wring the heart of his mother.

THEY WENT A-FISHING.

One morning, when Spring was in her teens,

A morn to a poet's wishing,

All tinted in delicate pinks and greens,-
Miss Bessie and I went fishing.

I in my rough and easy clothes,

With my face at the sun-tan's mercy; She with her hat tipped down to her nose, And her nose tipped-vice versa.

I with my rod, my reel and my hooks,
And a hamper for lunching recesses;
She with the bait of her comely looks,
And the seine of her golden tresses.
So we sat us down on the sunny dike,
Where the white pond-lilies teeter,
And I went to fishing, like quaint old Ike,
And she like Simon Peter.

All the noon I lay in the light of her eyes,
And dreamily watched and waited;

But the fish were cunning and would not rise,
And the baiter alone was baited.

And, when the time for departure came,

My bag hung flat as a flounder;

But Bessie had neatly hooked her game,—
A hundred-and-fifty pounder.

HOW RANDA WENT OVER THE RIVER. CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN.

The days passed on, gloomy days they were, with no Randa in the school-room.

Dr. Mayweed was sitting in her chamber, watching her breathing, and counting the quick beating of her pulse. There were wrinkles in his brows, such as always came when things were not as he wanted them to be.

"If I could only get it out," said the doctor, with the wrinkles growing deeper. And because he was not able to get "it" out, the sweet young life was burning up. He said it that the father and mother might understand that perhaps Randa was going away from them. They had feared it from the first, and had prayed the Lord to spare her, if it was best for them and best for the child.

The neighbors came to care for her, to fan cooling breezes upon her cheeks, to give her a drink of water, wishing that it might be to her the water of life,-hoping against hope as they saw her wasting away.

And Randa, the while, was sorry she was not at school,