Chapter IV: Part 4

Sometimes it is different, though. Once there was a boy came home from college on vacation. His parents lived on a farm. There was work to be done on the farm. Work on a farm always has to be done early in the morning. This boy didn't get up. His sister goes to the stairway and calls: "Willie, 'tis a beautiful morning. Rise and list to the lark." The boy didn't say anything. Then his Ma calls: "William, it is time to get up. Your breakfast is growing cold." The boy kept right on not saying anything. Then his Pa puts his head in the stairway, and says he, "Bill!" "Coming, sir!" says the boy.

I know a boy that hasn't got any parents. He goes in swimming whenever he pleases. _But I am going to stick to my parents._

However, I don't tell them so, 'cause they might get it into their heads that I couldn't get along without them.

Says this boy to me, "Parents are a nuisance; they aren't what _they're_ cracked up to be." Says I to him, "Just the same, I find 'em handy to have. Parents have their failings, of course, like all of us, but on the whole I approve of 'em."

Once a man says to me, "Bobby, do you love your parents?" "Well," says I, "I'm not a-quarrelling with 'em."

Once a boy at boarding-school went to calling his Pa the Governor, and got his allowance cut down one-half. His Pa said he ought to have waited till he was going to college.

Much more might be written about parents, showing their habits and so forth, but I will leave the task to abler pens.

* * * * *

A BIRD'S PECULIAR NEST.

There is preserved in the Museum of Natural History at Soleure, in Switzerland, a bird's nest made of steel.

A pair of wagtails had built a nest near the town of Soleure, and a clock-maker who had to pass along a road near the nest noticed something peculiar in its construction. He stopped one day and examined it, and, much to his astonishment, found it made entirely of steel. It was more than four inches across. As Soleure contains several clock-making shops, and the windows of these shops are frequently left open, the natural supposition is that the birds gathered up the thin spiral shavings of steel, and built their nest. The ingenious way in which these strands of steel are made to fit into one another and woven so compactly, is marvellous when the bird's trifling bit of strength is considered. A bird's nest is often an indication of its surroundings, as in the case of a city sparrow's nest, which is usually made of strings, bits of cotton, wisps of straw and hay, tooth-picks, cloth, the hair of horses, and such miscellany.

THE CHINAMAN'S SLED.

End of Project Gutenberg's Harper's Round Table, December 31, 1895, by Various