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-- .JUK timi,
WEEKLY CHAT WITH CORRESPONDENTS
tASTORELLA, of Buena Vista,
Ga., writes :
“Dear Children : It would be
'•-'SrgT a great pleasure to add my mite
%?) to the columns of the Weekly,
and aid in interesting its nu
merous young readers, but how to make
a beginning is the question.
“Perhaps it will amuse some of the
smaller ones, to tell of some of my little
boys’ adventures with the hens. They
are not used to the poultry yard, having
been raised in a city, and seem to de
rive endless amusement from watching
the chickens. They have the most won
derful facility of catching them on the
shortest notice you can imagine. If a
refractory hen persists in squeezing into
the wrong nest, I have only to give the
word—they surprise her in her stolen
quarters, chase her off, catch her, and
bring her in triumph to me.
“We had company one day, and as
Yve- were sitting at the dinner table, two
little fellows, who were waiting for the
second table, came running past the
door at full speed, each with a hen of
very meek look tightly hugged up under
his arm. I called out, in wonder, to
know what they were doing.
“ ‘ Going to make ’em lay. We’ve
made some such nice nests, and they
won’t stay in ’em.’
“And they persisted faithfully in
catching the rebellious hens, as often
as they refused to remain where they
were placed.
“Some hens were sitting in the fowl
house, and the boys had a habit of
climbing on the top, and often startled
the demure occupants from their so
lemn duty. I caught Franky there one
day, very busy at work.
“ ‘ Ah!’ cried I, ‘ Did I not tell you
not to go there?’
“ ‘ Mamma,’ said he, looking very
earnest and repentant, as he slowly
descended and came to me, ‘ I forgot
you said I musn’t. I poked her to see
if she was dead.’
“ One of Charlie’s hens will prove to
be very valuable, it seems ; for he came
in not long ago, and announced to us
and some friends, with an egg in his
open palm, 1 This makes the fourth egg
that hen’s laid to-day !’
“He has been verj r desirous of own
ing one all to himself —to govern and
control, to set, and watch over with
despotic sway. You will perhaps be
glad to learn that I have presented him
with a beautiful white pullet. I
BURKE’S WEEKLY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.
“If any of you are interested in
the future of Charlie’s hen, I will
make dots by the way, and send them
to the Weekly, as the future unfolds.
“lie made a great discovery the
other day. His mind had been much
exercised on the subject of making
matches, and having seen fire struck
from some flints for the first time,
he exclaimed:
“‘Oh! ma, I just found out how
they make matches. They beat up
flint just as fine as they can, and paste
it together, and stick it on the little
sticks.’
“ Do you think he was right!
“I have a niece in Brazil, who is
coming home to the States soon. She
has kept a journal during three years
spent in South America, which she in
tends showing me some day. If I
thought that extracts from it would
prove interesting to you all, I would
in my future letters bring them in. She
Elliptic Form of the Sun at the Horizon.
is a young, interesting girl, full of
poetical thoughts, and her descriptions
are quite (entertaining. If Mr. Burke
would like to have them he will let me
know, and I will with pleasure continue
the correspondence thus begun with
the readers of the Weekly.”
Mr. Burke begs to say, for himself
and his little readers, that whatever
“ Pastorella” writes will be most wel
come. By all means, let us hear more
of Charlie’s hen, and the sketches of
Brazil.
A Good Prescription.
An apothecary’s boy was lately sent
to leave at a house a box of pills, and
at another six live fowls. Confused on
the way, he left the pills where the
fowls should have gone, and the fowls
at the pill place. The folks who re
ceived the fowls were astonished at
reading the accompanying directions:
“ Swallow one every two hours.”
THE SUN.
* OP
HE light of the Sun is so dazz
ling Hi at, as every one knows
by experience, it is almost
impossible to look at it with the naked
eye when it shines in a clear sky devoid
of clouds, and at a certain distance
above the horizon. On the horizon
itself (that is to say, at the moment of
sunrise or sunset) this difficulty is no
longer experienced, and we may, with
out hurting our sight, acquired a notion
of the apparent form of its disc. The
very great diminution of the luminous
intensity of the solar rays when the Sun
is seen at the horizon, is explained very
simpty as follows: —Every ray of light
which comes to us from space and
reaches our soil must pass through the
Earth’s atmosphere; it is the more
absorbed by the air the greater the dis
tance that it travels and the denser the
air through which it passes. Now, if
we admit that the atmosphere extends
vertically to a height of 62 miles, a ray
of light coming from the zenith has
only these 62 miles to pass through
before reaching our eye, whilst at the
horizon the distance travelled would be
706 miles, and through the densest por
tions of the air. In fact, Bouguer found
that the intensity of solar light is one
thousand times less when the Sun is 1°
above the horizon than when it has
risen 40°; this result is, nevertheless,
only approximative, and depends very
much upon the.state of the atmosphere
and its purity on the day of observa
tion.
However that may be, there is never
any difficulty in looking at the Sun
when it is very near to the horizon.
We see it then in the form of a well
defined circular disc. But this disc,
instead of being a perfect circle, as we
shall see it should be, is more or less
flattened, especially on its under side;
it appears as an oval, which, moreover,
is not regular, but formed of the halves
of two ellipses. This peculiar deforma
tion is caused by the refraction of light
as it passes through the atmosphere,
the effect of which is to elevate the
various points of the limb or border of
the disc so much the more the greater
their proximity to the horizon.*
Illustrated Library of IVonders.
*<•*«
For Burke’s Weekly.
*
* * *
*
*
“Unknown.”
prints of feet are worn away;—
MM . No more the mourners come ;
The voice of wail as mute to-day
fAs his whose life is dumb.
The world is bright with other
bloom; —
Shall the sweet summer shed
It’s living radiance o’er the tomb
That shrouds the doubly Dead ?
“Unknown ! ” —beneath our Father’s face
These star-lit hillocks lie; —
Another Rose-bud!—lest His grace
Forget us when we die.
Written for Burke’s Weekly.
THE LIFE OF A ROBIN REDBREAST,
As Told by Himself.
BY PAUL H. HAYNE.
CHAPTER IV.
the housekeeper’s narrative.
Oft the second time, I fainted
dead away! When T woke
again, I saw a pitiful face
bending over me; a small white hand
lifted me tenderly from the earth.
Surely, I couldn’t be mistaken ! It
was the little girl I had heard them
call Lou !
“ Poor thing!” she whispered, “poor
thing!” My eyes were hazy and dim
with weakness; still I could see the
tears in hers. From that moment I
lost my first feeling of fear, and loved
the child with my whole soul.
If I had been made of gossamer,
thistle-down, cob-webs, or some such
frail, airy substance, she could hardly
have carried me with more dainty care.
Across the winding gravel path, round
the great house, up wearisome flights
of stairs, she bore me to a small but
neat room her own chamber, as I
rightly guessed—at the very top of the
mansion.
Here she dressed my wound with
sweet smelling oil, and laid me to rest
in a basket, comfortably stuffed with
* [ln other terms, the thicker the layer of
air traversed by the ray of light, the greater
the refraction.] “ On high mountain’s and on
plateaux near the sea coast this flattening of
the disc appears very considerable; it attains
sometimes to l-sth the apparent diameter of
the Sun. The disc of the Moon presents the
same phenomenon.” — Biot, “Astronomic Phy
sique.”
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