"Behold this apple lies on gold, and its form is most beautiful," and he reached it to the stranger who was the friend of his youth. But the stranger cut the apple in twain, and behold in the middle of it was a worm! From the German of Krummacher. The Kindness to animals is no unworthy exercise of benevolence. We hold that the lives of brutes perish with their breath, and that they are never to be clothed again with consciousness. inevitable shortness, then, of their existence should plead for them touchingly. The insects on the surface of the water, poor short-lived things, who would needlessly abridge their dancing pleasure of to-day? Such feelings we should have towards the whole animate creation. To those animals over which we are masters, for however short a time, we have positive duties to perform. This seems too obvious to be insisted upon; but there are persons who act as though they thought they could buy the right of ill-treating any of God's creatures. We should never in any way consent to the illtreatment of animals, because the fear of ridicule, or some other fear, prevents our interfering. As to there being anything really trifling in any act of humanity, however slight, it is moral blindness. to suppose so. The few moments in the course of each day which a man, absorbed in some worldly pursuit, may carelessly expend in kind words or trifling charities to those around him— and kindness to an animal is one of these are perhaps, in the sight of Heaven, the only time that he has lived to any purpose worth recording. Arthur Helps. EXERCISES IN ETYMOLOGY AND SPELLING. WORDS are either primary, compound, or derivative. A primary word is one in its simplest form, as -boy, horse, red. A compound word is made up of two or more simple words, as-coach-man, post-boy, horseman, foot-man, rail-way. A derivative word is made out of some simple word by the addition of a prefix or a suffix. A prefix is an addition of one or more letters before a word, as— A suffix is an addition of one or more letters Some of the most frequent prefixes are given below. Many of them are really Latin prepositions, and it is to be observed that the final letter of a preposition, when placed before another word, usually becomes, for the sake of more easy pronunciation, the same as the first letter of the word before which it is placed. Thus the Latin preposition "ad"-" to "-assumes the following forms when placed before words beginning with different letters of the alphabet ac, af, ag, al, an, ar, as, and at, ac-cept, af-firm, ag-gress-or, al-lude, an-nounce, ar-rive, as-cend, at-tend. In, into, in, and some- ig, il, im, ir times not Inter, between Intro, within *These prefixes should be carefully committed to memory. |