For The Children

When AVesley Barnes said bewas gong to deliver a lecture on rocks we lidn't suppose it would be very interjsting, but we all went, beeause this 3lub is to improve your mind; besides baving to pay a flne it you stay away. The line is Qve cents a time, and the rule is to buy books with it, but we only got two fines in all winter, and that was when Chris Frazer and Dolly had the measles. They wrote a poem and sent it to the club, and a story. They made it up, and G. F. wrote it out, because Chris and Dolly had to have kind of a roof over their eyes, and couldn't see much. G. F. came to West Rock and stayed two weeks. That was the time he wrote it out, and we are going to put it in, but not now. Susan said they ought to be excusad on account of the measles and the poetry, but the president said the fine was not for being to blame about it, but for not being there, and to make up the loss to the club. He said he would appoint a committee, and he appointed G. P. ï'ie committee reported that being sick was a mittergating circumstancj, andsotheymight pay the fine in chestnuts. They paid real plump ones, in a tin pail on the table. I teil you when you are in a room with a fireplace, and lots of coals, it's more than anybody can stand to give much atiention to lit'ery mattertj with a pail of chestnuts on the table. Even the president kept looking that way a good deal, and Jerry Frazer said, "Mr. President, I rise to a point of or der: I move that. the regular order of exercises be di3pensed while the club roasts these chestnuts." The president said that ougnt to come into unflnished business, but ry said the way was to go into a committee of the whole and then attend to it, The critic said it was out of order, because it was the time to hear the lecture, but Jerry found in the book that a motion to amend was always in order, so he moved to amend by substituting chestnuts, that meant putting them instead of the lecture. Everybod carried that motion, and we just pitched into those chestnuts. Susan says "pitched into" is slang, but I don't think so. You know yourself folks pitch hay. l've heard about ships pitching in rough weather, and sometitnes people pitch overboard. Then there's pitch dark, but I guess that's different, and I always thought it said that Noah pilched into the ark, but Susan says he "pitched it withiu," which doesn't mean quite the same meaning. The dictionary says to pitch is to throw yourself suddenly, head first, and that is just the way we did, but the president took the pail and divided the chestnuts. I read that in cities they have a kind of a little stove, right on the street corners, and roast chestnuts and sell 'em hot. They must make lots of money, because you can get chestnuts for nothing in the woods.and I don't 'spose they have to pay any rent for a street corner. If I don't have a stage or go peddling I mean to go into that business myself. It took a good while to roast the chestnuts, because we only had one shovel. Each fellow put on three, but the trouble was tUat sometimes one would burst open, or pop up the chitnney, and we couldn't teil whose it was. Dolly Frazer wasn't well enough to eat chestnuts, and so she said we might couiit all that burst to pieces in her share, and that made it right. Then we carue to the lecture. It was illustrated on a blackboard, but I believe G. F. made some of the pictures, and had specimens in a cigar-box, with hard ñames past ed on, like the stones the minister keeps on a shelf in his bookcase. We didn't 'spose Wesley Barnes knew such hard naines, but we found out he got ein out of the back part of the spelling-book. I'll put down all I can leinember of the talking part. "Ladies and gentlemen, my subject this evening is rocks. Bocks are the bones of the uni verse. If it was nol for his bones a mau would be a jelleyfish, and if you don't know how a jellyflsh looks, you can see a picture of one on the blackboard. If it wasn't for rocks this earth would be all mud, and everybody would go through to China. Small rocks are called stones. They are useful to build walls with, and for boys to piek up in the mowing lots. Stones grow in the winter. If you piek out all the stones in a mowing in the f all. there will be just as many new ones in the spring, l've tried it myself on our farm. Big rocks grow too, if they're not too big, and everybody can prove it by measuring the one at our back gate, or the one by the schoolhouse door. It getshigher every year. If you want to know where stones come from, in the flrst place, some folks think they have rained down like angleworms do. They've got one at Doctor Lamson's that rainid down; a man saw it come, and it was redhot. The schoolmaster says it tumbled off from a cornet. But I eau teil you stones were just made so, and put in ; some of them stirred all through the mud, hke raisins m a iection cake some in chunks like'big sliees of citrón and some all over like ice on a mülpond. Stones are good to throw, and to fire iu slings, but it is against the rule to take sling shots to our school Boys like to throw stones; they are made so, and you can't help it. Girla don't because they can't; their arms are put on wrong. Some stones are precious stones, like diamonds and rubies. Eubies are red. I know a girl named Ruby, and diamonds are just the same as coal, only the black ground ofï. Peoplehave tried to rnake coal into diamonds, in Australia, and in South America. The negroes wash the dirt, and piek out the diamonds, and have to go naked to keep 'em from liiding the big oes in their vest pockets. I should hale to be a negro in the winter. "A lucky stoné is a stone with a hole in it. You flnd 'em do vn by Carey' s Pond, and they give you good luck, but it is unlucky to take one to school. I know a boy that tried it withasplendkl one, and missed in his spelling lesson .he flrsi thing. "There is a rock in Massachusetts called Plymouth ltock ; folks think a good deal of it because the Pilgrims ook it to step on so as not to wet their :eet when they landed out of the Maylower. I've seen a picture of it with a fence around it. The fence wasn't there when the Pilgrims had it. This specimen of ad captandum vulgus is the same kind of a stone, and the Pilgrims might have used it il they had landed it West Rock instead of Plymoutb. It is nice and flat, and a good one to salt sheep on, but 1 only broke off a little piece. "This, ladies and gentlemen, is a lapsus Hngtice, a stone sometime used by shuemakers, but its principal valué is to crack butternuts on ; and this fine specimen is a ne plm ultra, from the underpinning of Captain Jerry Black's barn. This last specimen is sine qua non; they use it for gravestones and images of things. Sometimes it. is called mai-ble, because they used to make marbles out of the little pieces they had left from scolloping out images. They put the little bits iu boxe3 with holes iu both sides and covers on, and set the boxes in a stream of water that ran vcry swift down hlll. The water ran in at the 'holes on on e side and ran out at the other, and the marbles kept wobbling about till they got as rouud as anything. I don't know how many hundred years it took." That was all of the lecture. He had written out on paper. Dolly Fraze r was the critic, but just as she was going to teil what was the matter with it, her father came for her to go home. G. F. was with him, They'd been down to Water bury to hear a man preach to a distracted meeting. G. F. said he would just as soon walk home, and he would stay and be the critic. He read the lecture while he was warming his hands, but Susan thinks he knew it before. He said the lecture was a good one as far as it went, but it had entirely omitted the most important variety of rocks, the multum in parvo. He thought the leeturer might be mistaken aboutstones growing in winter. He rather supposed that the frost pushed larger stoues up and crowded them f urther out-of the ground, and íh the same way small stones might be thrown out upon the surface. But this kind that he was speaking of certainlydid grow. Hehad seen them grow larger himself, and he had seeu them grow smaller until they entirely disappeared. He said he had sorne specimens with him, and he would distribute them for the club to examine, only we must handle them very carsfully, and give them back to him. He brought in a big paper, kind of knobby on the outside, and inside was - rock candy ! We gave the bag back to G. F., but the specimens were just as he said, they disappeared.