ONE beautiful morning in the month of May, last year, when the school children of the city of Minneapolis awoke, their eyes were eagerly turned to the east for a token of the weather; for should the day be fine, they were to take part in an event unique in all their school life. Indeed, it is not likely that any children the world over ever engaged in so strange an enterprise. They were to move with their own hands an old dwelling-house-the first one erected in their city- from its site to a city park five miles away. For weeks they had been planning for the event, which was to be in the nature of a public celebration. The project was the resuit of the enterprise of a newspaper,one of the evening papers of Minneapolis,- and the whole city had entered into the plan with interest. The publishers of the paper had bought the building some time before, and had given it to the city. Following this, the novel plan was proposed of having the school children of the city, between the ages of nine and eighteen years, draw the building to its final home in a park at Minnehaha Falls, the beautiful little cataract so happily described in Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha."

The mayor of the city declared a public fêteday; the municipal offices, the public library, and the like, were closed; and the publicschool children had a holiday. If it had rained on the morning of the moving, five great steamwhistles in as many parts of the city were to be blown loud and long to notify the children of a postponement; but the weather was favorable, and more than ten thousand young people gathered at the school buildings in various parts of the city at fifteen minutes after eight o'clock, and then marched to their appointed stations. Many other thousands who would have liked to help pull assembled along the line of march; they would have assisted in the drawing of the building had it not been that not more than

ten thousand could be utilized, and the first applicants were selected.

The relays were from one thousand to fifteen hundred strong. They were distributed along the course so that no relay would travel further than suited the strength of the scholars.

The old house had been mounted upon wide moving-trucks, whose broad wheels would easily roll over the pavements. To spare the strength of the children, eight sturdy horses were attached to the wagon upon which the building had been loaded; but save as they aided in giving the proper direction and in steadying the movement of the line, they were not needed. In fact, there were several times when the children pulled the house fairly upon the haunches of the horses, and the drivers were at their wits' ends to guide their steeds.

Two ropes, each six hundred feet long, were attached to the ends of the wagon-poles of the teams; a double row of children, representing the first relay, formed in line under direction of the teachers of their schools; a stirring blast from the horn of a bugler rang out; and just at the stroke of nine the children gave a tremendous pull, and the old house moved off as handsomely and as royally as though it had been the chariot of a king. Thousands of people gathered along the route as the strange procession passed; and yet, while there were thousands of children, besides those who did the pulling, hurrying and scurrying along in a whirl of excitement, not an accident occurred.

Once in a while the children at the ropes would get so excited by the novelty of the whole affair that before the drivers would be able to check the movement, the children would pull the horses into a trot, and then there was great tumult and many cries and loud yells from the policemen along the route; and sometimes it took heroic measures to stay the youngsters in their mad course. At the

extreme head of the procession two other teams of horses were attached to the ends of the ropes to give direction to the line, though there was much more likelihood of the horses being run over than of their doing much good.

Many of the schools had banners to carry at the head of their lines, and all the children of the schools of the city had received badges which entitled them to the freedom of the streetcar lines of the city for the entire day. As rapidly as one relay completed its part of the course, the children stepped back, at a signal

The relay thus relieved then took the cars for the park, and there awaited the building.

At the end of five hours the odd procession reached the beautiful park. Here the mayor of the city, the members of the board of park commissioners, and representatives of other departments of the city, formally received the old house, and it was turned over to the park board to be maintained as a home for various interesting relics as long as its weather-beaten

It will be many days before the children of the schools of Minneapolis forget the time when, ten thousand strong, with banners flying and cheers resounding, and the stirring notes of the bugler's horn ringing out on the soft May air, they moved this humble but historic building to its last peaceful resting-place,

Where the Falls of Minnehaha

Flash and gleam among the oak-trees,
Laugh and leap into the valley.

IN May the gardener goes around
And with his spade he digs the ground.
He makes our front-yard garden-plot,
Then plants in it forget-me-not;
Pansies, too, with faces shy-

Always peeking at the sky

And while he works with all his might

I watch and make him do it right.

Now with my iron spade and rake,
I, too, a garden-plot can make.
My flowers very seldom grow
(I do not know the reason though);
And if I work the whole day through
The gardener cares not what I do.
He does not seem to think that he
Can learn a single thing from me.