tongues of fire aloft, as it licked hungrily at the rank brown grass. From the south to the north, and for many miles to the east, the valley would be swept clean, except where the isolated homes were surrounded by fire-guards or plowed fields. To the east, in front of the school-house, ran the wagon-road through the grass, and there lay their only safety, for on the side of the next hill was the nearest house -a dugout, with ample fire-guards about it.

little flock reached the plowed guards ahead of them, and were saved.

As they hurried into the yard, panting and breathless, Joe raised a frightened cry and sprang to meet them.

"Susie! Susie! - where are you?"

Pupils and teacher looked at each other in anguished dismay, and began a distracted counting of the children.

"And where 's Lizzie Warner?" piped a childish voice.

"

Down this road the teacher hurried the children, keeping ever behind them. The larger scholars ran ahead, too terror-stricken to think of anything but their own safety, and were soon out of danger; but only the short distance saved the smaller ones as, protected and urged by their teacher, they pattered down the road, with eyes and throats smarting from the smoke that swirled about them. Behind them roared and crackled the flames, but everyone of the

blistered and blackened caught in futile flight?

All turned and gazed shudderingly on the scene from which they had just fled. The fire had swept over the school-house, and was already far down the valley, leaving blackness behind it. The feet of the children had worn away the grass about the house, leaving no place for the fire to catch in the lower part of the building; but as the billows of flame had rolled over the roof, its apex had caught and held a little tongue of flame; and now the whole roof was rapidly disappearing under spurts of red and rolling clouds of black.

Were the missing children lying suffocated beneath the burning roof, or were they lying on the prairie,

Leaving the little ones behind, the teacher scattered the others over the prairie, not knowing in which direction the bewildered children might have fled, and with Joe, now wildly sobbing, hurried toward the burning building. The smoke and heat from the charred grass were stifling, but not more so than the terror that seemed to keep their hearts at a standstill as

they ran, their only thought the possible rescue of the bodies from the now partly consumed building.

They dashed through the smoke that poured over the tottering walls toward the entrance, which was on the opposite side. Once around the building, the two stopped suddenly, unable to move from the reaction that followed the tension which both had been enduring.

On the ground, leaning against some of the fallen sticks of the woodpile, close to the wellcurb, and safe on the windward side of the smoke, was Susie Simmons, conscious and unhurt, but blackened and limp. By her side knelt Lizzie, striving, with a grimy handkerchief, to wash the soot from the little one's face. After a moment of silence, Joe flung himself by his sister, and caught her in his arms, with wild endearments and renewed sobbingsa breach of his idea of manly behavior of which he would not have been guilty under less exciting conditions, while the teacher, scarcely less relieved, lifted Lizzie to a seat by her side to learn of her escape.

So engrossed had she been in the welfare of the smaller child that her own condition and appearance had not occurred to her. Her clothes dripping, her hair singed, her face disfigured by smoke and paths of perspiration, her eyes wide and scared, trembling and half crying, she told her story.

"I should have been with you and the children, but after we had started I remembered that I had heard Joe tell Susie to sit still till he came back; but that was before he knew what was the matter, and I knew he had forgotten her when he saw the fire, so I ran into the house for her. I thought, maybe, I could get her out before the fire came; but I was no more than inside when a flame and a lot of smoke sucked in after me. I slammed the door, and dragged Susie to the water-pail; for I had heard about firemen breathing through wet cloths, and I dipped our handkerchiefs into the water, and held them to our faces. It must have been only a minute, but it seemed to me an hour, that the fire was over us, and it was dreadful!

We could n't breathe, the room was so hot and so full of smoke, and every window seemed full of red and black snakes. Then the windowpanes began to crack, and I thought the fire would fill the house in another minute; and then, just as we could see light and a bit of the sky, we seemed to fall down, down, ever so far. But as I fell I caught the water-pail, and the cold water fell all over me, and kept me awake. Then I heard the fire crackle in the roof, so I got Susie out here, and brought out your papers and all the books I could get out before the smoke was too thick for me to go in. And it 's made me feel — rather — tired."

She concluded weakly, and leaned against the sticks of wood behind her, for she was out of breath. Then Joe, the bluff, the severe, the scoffer at "sissy-boys," did a strange thing. He went across to Lizzie, threw his arms about her, and kissed her, not once only, but twice, on her grimy cheek.

"I've made fun of you and called you a coward lots of times, and felt like a hero myself; but to-day, when I forgot Susie, and you came back and stayed through the fire with her, it showed which was the coward and which the hero. And I'll tell you now that there have n't been any Indians or wildcats here for years, and the coyotes won't fight, and there has never been a cyclone in this country; so I've been making up yarns just to scare you. Don't ever speak to me again if you don't want to."

Which, taken altogether, was quite the most correct, eloquent, and touching speech that Joe had ever made.

"Don't tell me not to speak to you," returned Lizzie, with spirit; "for I shall, lots of times. Still, I am glad, all the same, that I don't need to dread Indians and wildcats and cyclones any more, for the prairie fire was so awful when it came. But," she added reflectively, "I'm glad that I thought to come back and stay with Susie, for she 'd have either smothered or burned up; and I am glad, too, to have us both know that real things don't frighten me as much as imaginary ones do."

VOL. XXIV.-115.

the Hawaiian monarchs as they might be today to the hearts of patriotic Princeton students, and were sought for far and near throughout the islands. The populace paid poll-taxes in golden feathers instead of golden dollars, and as each bird furnished but a few feathers, the taxes may be considered as having been high. Some estimate of the value of the feathers may be formed from the prices paid in later times, when a piece of nankeen cloth valued at a dollar and a half was the equivalent of five feathers; but, after all, the great element in the cost of these cloaks was time and labor, since the making of a single cloak required from fifty to a hundred years.

As the feathers obtained for taxes were very far from supplying the demand, the chiefs were accustomed to employ a regular staff of birdcatchers, much as a medieval baron had his staff of falconers. These skilled foresters prepared a sort of bird-lime from the gum of the fragrant "olapa," mixed with the juice of the breadfruit-tree, and with it smeared the branches of the flowering trees frequented by the honey-suckers.

One species of bird, adorned with two tufts of yellow feathers only, could be released after these had been plucked; but the coveted feathers of the mamo grew upon the body, and to obtain them the life of the bird was sacrificed. And just as year by year the fur-seal legions have been thinned, so year by year the mamo disappeared before the dusky goddess of fashion until the last one was trapped, and the bird

lived only in the name mamo, which had been applied to the robes made from its feathers.

Truly regal they were in appearance, the finest gleaming in the sunlight like mantles of gold, while those made of red and yellow feathers had a barbaric splendor of their own. The groundwork of these cloaks is a rather coarse network into which the feathers are woven with a skill that, like the bird, has passed away and is a lost art.

The great war-cloak of Kamehameha I. was the work of years; during the reigns of eight preceding monarchs it grew beneath the hands of cunning craftsmen, until in all its fair proportions it became the property of Kamehameha the Powerful, the outward badge of the sovereignty which claimed sway over all the surrounding islands.

This cloak, made entirely of yellow feathers, is four feet in length, and nearly twelve around the bottom - about the same size as the one in the National Museum, although this last is a trifle more than half composed of red feathers from a more plebeian bird which science has aptly named Vestiaria coccinea, or "clothed in scarlet." The cloak was once the property of the powerful chief Kekuaskalami, who forfeited it, together with his life, in a rebellion having for its purpose the restoration of the ancient religion of Hawaii. It next came into the hands of Kamehameha III., by whom it was presented to Commodore J. H. Aulick, and finally it was deposited in the National Museum by the Commodore's grandson, Mr. R. O. Aulick.

ONE day wee Willie and his dog
Sprawled on the nursery floor.
He had a florist's catalogue,
And turned the pages o'er,

Till all at once he gave a spring. "Hurrah!" he cried with joy; "Mama, here's just the very thing To give your little boy!

"For when we fellows go to school, We lose our things, you know; And in that little vestibule

They do get mixed up so.

"And as you often say you can't
Take care of 'em for me,
Why don't you buy a rubber plant
And an umbrella tree?"

THE poet's daughter sat on a toadstool at sunset by the great sea, and ate her bowl of porridge. And while she was dazzling her eyes watching the setting sun, a flying-dragon came crawling up over the rocks. He fanned the little girl with his wing, and when she thanked him politely he begged her not to mention it. So she finished eating her porridge very comfortably, and when he saw that it was gone he cleared his throat and said timidly: "Do you ever play Twenty Questions?" "Yes, indeed," said the poet's daughter. "Do you want to play now?"

"I should like it very much."

Then the dragon was full of joy, for he was fond of the game, and had not played for two hundred years.

"You think of something," said he eagerly, "and I'll ask the questions. Are you ready? Yes? Animal, mineral, or vegetable?" "Neither," said the poet's daughter. "Is it something you can see?" "Hear?" "Yes."

"Yes."

"Living?" "No."

"Is it something men make?" "Is it useful?" "Ye-e-s." "Ornamental ? " "Yes."

"Has it any color?" "No."

66

"Yes."

Something you can see and hear, that men make, is useful and ornamental, and has no color," said the dragon, thoughtfully. "Hum! Let me think." He put his head under his wing and thought for three minutes. "Can you play it?" "No," said the poet's daughter, shaking her head and laughing.

"Then," said the dragon, "not a game or music? Hum! Is it used for saying things?" "Yes."