wife will never find any fault with you if you mind her like that; and yet you never know what a woman will like,” he added meditatively, for he was a philosopher as well as a thief. "Now see how well you can mind me," he said. "Stand here and hold my horse while I go over the hedge, and take good care of my bag."

It was not easy to climb through the hedge, for it was all thorns and briers, but the very moment that the thief was through it, the simple old man put his foot in the stirrup of the thief's noble horse and rode away like the wind chasing a hat.

"Hold on!" shouted the thief.

"Yes, sir, I am a-holding on," he cried, "and I am a-taking care of the bag, sir, just as you told me to. I'm a-minding, sir."

"Stay," called the thief, "and I'll give you half of all I've got."

"My wife didn't tell me to," said the simple old man, "and I don't think she'd like it if I did. She told me to go to the landlord and pay the rent."

There was nothing for the thief to do but to sit down on the ground and cut open the old man's saddle. The leather was hard, and his sword was rusty, for he was more accustomed to frightening people with it than to cutting their heads off, and it was full three hours by the sun that he worked to get the saddle open; and after all, there was nothing in it but rags, for when the simple old man

had once made his way out of his wife's sight, he had taken the money out of the saddle and put it into his

bosom, for he said to himself,

"A man ought to be at the head of his own house, and I am going to do what I like with it. I'm not one bit afraid."

The old man had

never sat on SO

noble a horse be

fore, and had never had such a gallop in all his life as he had that morning. When he came to his landlord's house, he opened the portmanteau, and the landlord stared in surprise,

for there were five hundred pounds in silver and five hundred pounds in good yellow gold..

"And where did you get the silver money, and where

did you get the gold?" asked the landlord; and the simple old man answered,

"I met a man by the way, and he and I swapped horses, and he gave me the silver money and the gold money to boot."

"I don't believe that you ought to go about by yourself with all that money," said the landlord; and the simple old man answered,

"I don't think any one would hurt such a simple old man as I am; and besides, I always do what my wife tells me to, for she has learning and she can count. Maybe the fine gentleman that I met didn't mind his wife."

The simple old man did not go home by the highway, but by a narrow lane; and far down the road he spied old Tib feeding under a tree, for the fine gentleman had found that he could get on faster without her. So the simple old man and Tib and the fine gentleman's horse and the fine gentleman's portmanteau with the gold and the silver all went home together; and when his wife saw it she danced for joy, and she said,

"Now, old man, see what you get by minding your wife!"

From "Old Ballads in Prose." By Eva March Tappan.

He that by the plough would thrive,

Himself must either hold or drive.

Benjamin Franklin.

MY NATIVE LAND

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,-
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

From "The Lay of the Last Minstrel."

One of the illusions is, that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES

BY PLATO

Socrates was a celebrated Greek philosopher who lived in the fifth century before Christ. His high simple life and noble teachings drew many disciples to him, but he was accused by the government of misleading the young, and condemned to drink a cup of hemlock. Plato, who preserved many of Socrates's utterances in his Dialogues, was his most famous pupil.

"Soon must I drink the poison. Already, the voice of fate calls me. But let a man who has cast away the pleasures of the body as alien to him be of good cheer about his soul; the man who has sought the pleasures of knowledge in this life,—who has adorned his soul in her own proper jewels, which are temperance, and justice, and courage, and nobility, and truth; in these she is ready to go on her journey to the world below when her time

comes."

When he had done speaking, Crito said: "And have you any commands for us, Socrates,-anything to say about your children, or any other matter in which we can serve you?"

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Nothing particular," he said, " only, as I have already told you, I would have you look to yourselves; that is a service which you may always be doing to me and mine as well as to yourselves. And you need not make professions; for if you take no thought for yourselves, and walk