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His voice sank as he tried to loose her hold and fall back. She shook him again. She put down her lantern, and held him with one hand while she beat him with the other. She did not know that this was her own salvation, too; but she knew that it was the only way to save Benny.

"You lazy thing! You wicked boy!" she shouted, not caring what she said. "Take hold of my hand. We'll make Roy go home, and we 'll follow him."

She kept at work. She slapped the boy's face. She was not in the least particular as to how or where she struck him.

In a moment, to her great joy, he began to resent her treatment. He struck out at her in return. "Do you think I'm going to thtand thith?" he cried.

Naomi stopped her tears and stood up to the fight. She taunted him. She said the most irritating things.

From utter helplessness, the boy gradually became roused to amazement and anger. What had come over his sister?

If she had come ten minutes later, she probably never could have brought him back to life.

"Now come home with me," she said when she was so weary she could keep up the battle no longer. She tried to pull him after her. But he began to whimper, and said:

"I tell you I can't go! There 'th thomething the matter with my legth. They are jutht like plugth of wood. That 'th why you knocked me down tho eathy. Gueth you could n't have done it if they had n't been thtiff!"

Naomi's blood went back chokingly to her heart. But she said with determination :

"For all that, you 've got to come!

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It seemed as if every

She must waste no time. instant froze a drop of blood. Which way should she try to move? In the cloud of snow, and the hurtling of the wind, was there a strange, dim radiance ahead? Naomi peered forward, distrusting her own eyesight, holding Ben in her arms the while.

Roy, as if he had known all the time where he was, now arose and began to walk slowly forward. The next moment, the girl heard-for the wind brought the words straight from the speaker: Naomi! Ben! My children!" Roy barked with delight.

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Naomi knew then that they were close to their own home; the light was the one that she herself had put in the window, and it was her mother's voice that was calling.

Inspired, empowered by a strength beyond her own, she lifted Ben and staggered forward toward the light.

Stumbling, slipping, she struggled on, she knew not how, conscious only that she was still going toward the light which all the time grew more and more distinct.

Soon she saw that her mother was leaning from an open window,— and she cried out huskily: "Mother! Mother! Here we are!” Naomi knew afterward that her mother crawled - Mrs. Dunlap could not tell how-to the door and opened it, and that in some way she herself reached the warm kitchen with her burden. There the heat seemed to stop her breath, and she fainted, dimly feeling the dog's soft, warm tongue on her face as her last sensation.

When she came to life again, the doors were still open, and the sharp wind was 'blowing in, for Mrs. Dunlap knew that a warm room was not the

She pulled him, his feet shuffling and dragging, place for frost-bitten people. She had been rubRoy walking close to her gravely.

She stopped, panting, desperate.

"Ben," she said, in a voice that went through the boy's numb, half-frozen senses like a knife; "do you want to die? You are freezing! If you don't try with all your might, we shall both freeze! Think of Mother waiting for us!"

bing their temples and hands with snow, sitting on the floor beside them.

Naomi, naturally strong and well, soon revived and began earnestly to care for Benny, working over him as her mother directed; and her commands were so wise that the boy received no permanent injury, though his feet were but "poor

Ben tried and struggled. In all his little life, he things," he said, all that winter. had never made such an effort before.

He sank back, crying out in an agony:

The storm did not last very long.

The next day the sun shone, an1 Naomi went out

“Oh, no; I can't walk! You'd better go home toward the pine wood, and at the very edge, nearto Mother!"

He sobbed and clung to her.

Naomi stood upright a moment, holding her brother and trying to think, while the dog lay down in the snow.

But nothing came clearly to her mind save the picture of her mother, helpless, sitting by the kitchen stove, waiting and listening.

est the house, she found Ben's tin pail; the cover was off, and in the frozen milk was a deep hole, evidently made by Roy, who, as he had already tasted the milk, received the rest of it as a gift.

Not far off was the lantern, which Naomi had thrown aside when she found Ben. She was now sure she had been no more than a few rods from the house at any time.

"Perhaps I went around and around," she said to herself, as she took up the lantern. "But if I had n't gone out for him, Ben would have died." With this, she pressed back the somewhat hysterical sobs that were rising, and hurried home with the pail and lantern.

"You need n't try to make fun of it all," said Ben in the dusk of the next evening. He caught his sister's hand closely as he sat bolstered in a big

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chair by the stove. "I know what you did, you thaved me. I knew you were a brick!" there came a little quiver in his voice. "Well," he said, beginning again, "Mother thaid I ought to thank Heaven for you; and if I really wath thankful, you know, I thould try to be the kind of a brother you 'd alwayth be proud of all your life." "And so you will," said Naomi, "I do believe you will!"

A VISIT TO SHAKSPERE'S SCHOOL.

BY REV. ALBERT DANKER.

A FEW years ago, I visited Stratford-on-Avon, the home and birthplace of the great poet and dramatist, William Shakspere, and I wish to tell the boys and girls who read ST. NICHOLAS, about a visit made to the school the great poet attended when he was a boy. Stratford is nestled on the banks of the gentle-flowing river Avon. It is a large country town, but the chief interest attached to the place is that there Shakspere was born; there he died, and in the ancient church of the Holy Trinity, alongside the murmuring river, he lies buried.

On entering the town, I proceeded directly to the famed "Red Horse Hotel," described so charmingly by our own Washington Irving, in his well-known "Sketch Book."

And indeed, there are carefully preserved in that quaint old house, numerous memorials of Irving. The little Red parlor, in which he lived and wrote, and even the poker wherewith he stirred his fire are sure to be exhibited to American guests. The poker was as carefully preserved as a precious relic; it was done up in a cloth bag, and engraved on one side of it was the legend: 66 Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre."

est village, and an affability and politeness,—a hospitable regard to your comfort, which is especially grateful to your feelings, as, weary and wayworn, you enter their portals.

After a breakfast in Irving's parlor, the next morning, I walked down Henley street to the ancient house in which Shakspere was born.

After looking it carefully through, proceeding to Chapel street, I reached the interesting grammar school, where once the wonderful poet might have been seen as a schoolboy,

"With his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school."

Sometimes, no doubt, he strolled off, truant fashion, to fish with a pin-hook in the silvery Avon, or ran down to the little hamlet of Shottery, across the fields,

"When daisies pied, and violets blue, And ladysmocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight."

In Chapel street, not far from Shakspere's American boys and girls would greatly enjoy birthplace, may be seen the square chapel of the old English inns. ancient Guild, and in the building adjoining is the grammar school.

They frequently present, from without, a grim, fortress-like aspect, with no broad steps or portico leading up to the entrance. They are entered beneath an archway, leading sometimes into a courtyard; at others, into the entrance hall, where the traveler is received, not by burly porters, but by trim waiting-maids.

There is an indescribable air of neatness and coziness, of "home-iness," so to speak, pervading these inns, in the largest city as well as the small

The record tells us that Robert de Stratford, in 1269, first founded a chapel and hospital there, with permission of the Bishop of Worcester, and became the first master of it.

The brethren wore a peculiar dress, and each, on admission into the hospital, promised obedience to the master, and took a vow of good behavior.

In 1482, Thomas Jolyffe, a priest, a native of Stratford, and a member of the Guild, gave certain

lands and tenements to the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross, to maintain a priest fit to teach grammar freely to all scholars.

At the Reformation, the entire property fell into the King's hands, but the young Edward VI. granted the whole again for charitable and public

uses.

There is very little doubt that here, in his boyhood, Shakspere conned his task, and in one of his plays he describes a character called Malvolio as "most villainously cross-gartered," "like a pedant that keeps a school i' the church,"

those of some American boys of about the same age whom I knew,-and I must say that our juvenile Yankees have often made a much better classical recitation, in my hearing, than the one I heard that day from their English cousins.

However, that was not a fair specimen of the educational training of boys in England, for at Harrow, Eton, and Rugby, the standard is extremely high, and, as everybody knows, the youth of the realm are generally capital scholars.

The boys in Shakspere's school when I visited it were lively fellows, full of fun, brimming over

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which description may have been based upon one of his own early recollections.

The antique appearance of the schoolroom is to a great extent gone, for in the lapse of time many of the old, characteristic features have passed away. Yet the room still looks hoary and venerable, and impressed me deeply. At the invitation of the Head Master, I listened for a few minutes to the recitations in Greek of a class of stout and sturdy English boys. I was desirous of comparing the classical attainments of these youths with

with spirits, and somewhat given to skylarking when the master's back was turned. Poor man! he seemed to have a rather hard time of it, in his endeavor to maintain a conversation with me, and at the same time restrain the exuberant feelings of his pupils.

So, bidding him "Good-morning," I left those classic walls, musing on my way; for Stratford will ever remain a beacon to the enthusiast in Nature's loveliness, as well as to the admirer of intellect and genius in man.

ANSWERED RIDDLE-JINGLE.

gay little fellow,
Black, scarlet and yellow.

Lay for a year in a rude wooden bed. e never once wriggled.

Nor grumbled nor giggled,
Blut secretly listened to all that was said,

Till his neighbors got crusty
And said he was dusty.

hen quickly they tumbled him out on his head r

And whipped him and rapped him And cuffed him and slapped him. nd hurried him back to his hard Wooden bed.

G-RH

A GRANDMOTHER WHO CAN DRAW.

ONE day Freddy came slowly up to Grandmamma and, holding out his slate, said in his very sweetest way: "Grandma, do you think you could draw a boy for me?"

"But Grandma is very busy now," his Grandma said. "Well, but only just a boy, Grandma; a little teenty, tonty boy," said Freddy. So his Grandmamma laid

aside her

knitting

and drew

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the picture of a little

boy away down in one cor

ner of the slate. And Fred

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dy leaned on the arm of the chair, and saw just how she made the picture. Now, Grandma," said Freddy, before she had drawn the boy's arm, "don't you think you could make a lion by the boy-just a little lion, you know, and a—and a tiger, p'r'aps, and a' nelefant, and a,- Oh, yes!—and a big 'nosseros, and a- Oh, yes, Grandma! - a

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"Why, why, Freddy!" said Grandmamma; “I thought you only wished one little boy, and now you want a whole menagerie!"

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Well, Grandma," said Freddy, "please draw me just a little piece of a 'nagerie, will you-just a little tiger- a baby tiger!" So Grandmamma drew the tiger and Freddy was so happy with his boy and his tiger that he put the slate on a chair and looked at them a long time.

You can see the little boy on the slate, in the picture. And Freddy's Grandma is just drawing the tiger. But if that is a baby tiger, the little boy on the slate must run! For the baby tiger is ever so much bigger than the little boy!

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