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August 16, 1911] THE P
"Wind was lazy, and put off going. One day he
saw that the maiden's hair was as white as snow.
"Oh, the strong North Wind had put his crown
on her head!" he sighed, for he thought that he
had lost her. But it was not an Indian maiden
he saw. It was the Prairie Dandelion, and she
vanished one windy day.?Ex.
LITTLE SISTER FROM JAPAN.
Little Yama San sat behind the latticed bali
r-ii ' 1 - -
vivujf in 11 er itniier s nouse. sne peeped through
the slats of her shutters and listened with longing
to the laughter and singing that came from
the house on the other side of the narrow street.
The little girl had never been allowed to walk
on the street or to know any of the neighbors,
so for a whole year she had just looked and
listened from behind her shutters before she
dared ask a question. It is not considered polite
in Japan to ask questions.
So trembling a little, little Yama San stood
before her mother with her hands tightly clasped
on her little blue kimono and said, "0 dear
and honorable mother, what is the house across
the street? I see many happy children go in
there and I hear much laughter and sweet singing."
Her mother smiled kindly at the little girl as
she answer, "That is a Mission school, 0 my
daughter, from America. These kind and honorable
men and women come from a country across
the sea. They wish to teach the Japanese children
many fine things and tell of their God. But
such a school is not for the high born daughter
of the great General Huy San. It is for the
children of the low born and the poor."
i X it- 1 < * ?
ai mese last words, tne brignt black eyes of
little Yama filled with tears but she only said
meekly, "O honorable mother, the days are
long and lonely and I too would learn of many
things."
But her mother sighed and shook her head.
"Thy honorable father does not approve of
the education of women. What is the use of it?
You remain in this house until you reach the
proper age, when General Huy San will himself
choose a high born husband for his daughter
and you will then go to your husband's house,
there to remain."
But the long year of waiting had made little
Yama braver and so she actually entreated her
mother, which children very seldom dare to do
in Japan.
"0 dear and honorable mother, I am so lonely
and tired I fear I will die."
At this, her mother seeing how pale and thin
she looked, promised to ask the General about
'the school. To the surprise of mother and
daughter, he consented. The ladies of the mission
had already spoken to him about his little
girl.
How delighted Yama was with every thing
and how quickly she learned was the wonder
of the school. She carried off the prizes, and,
after several years, she won a scholarship in a
college for girls in that wonderful America,
she had heard so much about.
So when her parents bade her go and learn
all she could, she sailed away in the great ship,
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she reached the college, however, she soon wore a
shirtwaist and skirt like all the others. They
taught her to play tennis and to act in the little
plays. In fact Ye ma was the most popular girl
in college before she had been there six months.
She was so eager to learn, so polite and so unselfish?all
these are Japanese traits, and pretty
good ones for every day use.
All the girls were glad when, at the end of the
four years, she won the biggest prize the college
S E 8 fi Y T E K1 A H OF THE 80
offered?a four years' course at a great university.
That is the last I know of Yama San.
Whether on finishing at the University, she returned
to Japan and opened a girls' school
there, as she told me she hoped to do, I do not
know, but she had become a Christian, and her
mother had also, and she had the faith that
"moves mountains." Had she not been moved?
(Yama means mountain.)
A GIANT AMONG BEASTS.
BY CHARLES T. WHITE.
One of the vivid memories of the writer's boyhood
is that of creeping out of bed in the gray
dawn of a summer morning to watch a troop of
elephants passing on a country road. What
huge beasts they were, and how oddly out of
place they looked where one had been used to
seeing nothing larger than cattle, sheep and
horses! A native of India or Africa would not
be much surprised at such a sight, though, for
these warm countries are the home of the
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elephant, and these animals are oftener seen in
herds than singly. One traveler in southern
Africa saw eight hundred elephants together
near the Zambesi River, but the herds are commonly
much smaller. But even a small herd
stops for nothing which comes in its path, plowing
a way through the densest jungle, as they
move along in single file.
We say that a steam engine is twenty horse
power, meaning by this that it will do as much
work as twenty horses. In India, elephants are
used much as we use horses, and are capable of
dragging enormous loads. In this kind of work,
the elephant has one advantage, for he can make
a road for himself, trampling down whatever
comes in his way; but, though he is en intelligent
animkl and easily tamed, he sometimes
proves freaky and makes trouble for his drivers
by doing the wrong thing. History tells us how
elephants were used in war hundreds of years
ago. They were arranged in front of the troops,
when a battle was preparing, and worked dreadful
havoc among the soldiers of the enemy.
Let us hope that all these horrid cruelties of
war will soon be read of only as things which
happened years ago!
The trunk gives the elephant its peculiar appearance,
and is by all odds the most wonderful
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I'ai i ui iiuc uugc uuujr. 11 lias inmost me ueneacy
of a human hand, picking up a pin or uncorking
a bottle, but marvelously strong, supporting
heavy weights, and crushing a man's
body in its muscular grip. This last dreadful
accident has happened more than once, but, as
a rule, an elephant which is kindly treated is
docile and shows a strong affection for his keeper.
The story is told of one of these animals, which
played nurse to a little child, rocking the cradle
with his trunk, and keeping off the flies, while
the child slept.
It grieves one to think how many happy wild
creatures are slaughtered every year to supply
us with the things we could easily do without.
Numbers of elephant are killed for the ivory
furnished by their tusks, which is still a valuable
article of trade and barter in Africa and parts
of Asia. We fancy sometimes that it is less
pitiful to destroy an animal which can Ho
damage itself than a weaker one?like the song
birds?which makes no resistance. But God
gives life to the weaker and stronger alike, and,
?s for the elephant, it may be said to his credit
that he rarely shows fight, except in self-defense.?The
Morning Star.
Defer not till to-morrow to be wise.?Congreve.
1 U T? ?L (775) 7
HOW PAPER CAME TO BE INVENTED
Long years ago a little, thin Japanese gentleman
walked through his pretty garden to his
home; his hands were clasped behind his back,
and he was thinking, as he crossed the bridge, to
'pluck a fresh wistaria blossom that hung just
over his head. This little gentleman had a
great many parcels to send out from his shop
every week, and he had always wrapped them in
silk; but this was expensive material, and he
wanted something cheaper to use for this purpose.
All at once a wasp came lilting toward
him, but he thrust it away that it might not
nip his nose, and?lo!?there at his hand was a
wasps' nest. My, but he came very near angering
the whole family! Think, then, what he
might have suffered from these stingers for days
to come! "What a shapely nest they had made,
now he oame to think of it! It was so strong
too. It was made of thin wood pulp, softened
into a thin paste by the jaws of the insect, then
formed and left to dry.
"Why can't I do that same thing?" thought
the Japanese merchant to himself. "Get certain
wood, form it into a pulp by nteans of
water from the river near by, and make something
like the wasps' nest in consistency, to wrap
about my packages?" So this was the way
paper was first invented. An innocent wasp
flew across the path of a gentleman who walked
one day in a vine-clad garden in old Japan.?
The Pilgrim Visitor.
WHP.RF. "RTP/ns fltvpd tw ott*rifrb?t>
rw w?MII* xxi nui A?IA
(xi zero weather, when the night is pitch dark
and there is a piercing wind dnving a biting
snow, perhaps you have wondered, as I have, to
think how the little, wild birds could manage to
sleep and not freeze, or be covered up with the
snow.
One stormy, winter night, while walking
through Central Park, New York City, I partly
answered the question. A branch of a larg->
pine tree swung close to, and a little above a
street lamp. The branch and its twigs were
quite free from snow, the dense leaves or
"needles" forming a roof above them and catching
the snow which had quickly filled up the
spaces between the slender leaves. Here and
there, under the most cozy-looking of the leaf
clusters, was a little group of English sparrows
looking as comfortable as could be. They were
somewhat disturbed by my pausing to watch
them, and a few left to find a perch on some
higher branch. Probably there were scores of
these sparrows in this tree; for I was able to
examine only the branch near the light. Who
knows but that every pine in the park, and many
a one in the woods as well, is a very tenement
for the birds!?Edmund J. Sawyer.
A HANDSOME APOLOGY.
Ned and his grandmother are the best friends,
but sometimes the little boy's tongue is too quick
to please the old lady. Then Ned apologizes
after a fashion of his own, which his grandmother
approves.
"I got tired of lugging that wheelbarrow for
grandmother while she was changing her
plants," Ned said to his mother, recounting the
-A ^ " - -
a events wi oeuume, "ana i said, * I wish
there wasn't another speck of this hateful dirt
in all the world!' But then, afterwards, I 'pologized."
"I am glad of that," said his mother. "Did
you tell her you were sorry?"
"No, that is not the kind grandmother likes
best," said Ned. "I got another wheelbarrow
full and just said: 'Don't you want some more
of this nice dirt, grandmother?' And then we
were all right again."?Exchange.