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the table in her room. On the following Sunday, when Mary was to stay at home with the little ones while nurse went to church, she remembered me, and brought me down to amuse the young Spensers. Like all the rest of their race, they soon became tired of me, and I was thrust away in this dusty cupboard till now. Of all the histories that have been related to amuse you, none, I am sure, have surpassed mine for vicissitudes and changes. I was the early companion of Duchesses and Lords, and yet have been doomed to endure the society of coachmen and stable boys, and to be rescued from a rackety bird-cage to end my days in a dusty cupboard!

Then the Shuttlecock ceased to speak, and betook herself to her corner, to bewail in private the sad downfall she had endured.

"And now," said the Ball, "I will call upon our venerable friend, the Noah's Ark; I am sure he will be able to tell us a great deal that is very interesting about himself and his numerous tribe."

The poor old Ark creaked slowly forward, and announced his willingness to add his history to the rest, beginning in the following words.

CHAPTER IX.

WHAT BECAME OF NOAH'S ARK AND ALL ITS BEASTS.

MUST tell you a little about the hands that first made us, and to do so I

must take you in fancy to the high

Alps in Switzerland. There, during the long bright summer months, according to the practice of the country, the flocks and herds are pastured, only descending to the villages in autumn, when food and fodder grow scant. A temporary dwelling is erected, in which the Sennerin, the young girl who usually takes charge of them, lives for the season, and where she follows the dairy business peculiar to her calling. The long summer days pass so calmly and pleasantly there, while the cows and their young ones crop the juicy herbage of these mountain pastures. Meanwhile the shepherd lads, and those who are not busied in more active labours, often pass their leisure hours, while guarding their

K

flocks with the help of their intelligent dogs, in carving cleverly some pretty little toys in the light wood peculiar to their province. These find a ready sale with the travellers, who climb these lofty heights to feast their eyes on the ranges of distant peaks and Alpine passes, that seem almost reaching up to the sky.

Sitting on the grass, with their quaint, oldfashioned knives, these lads carve elegant and graceful trifles, that often eventually find their way into royal palaces, and are used by many dainty fingers. My maker, however, was more given to the construction of toys for children; he preferred fashioning all kinds of animals and reptiles, to making flower bestudded paper knives or perforated work baskets; and he found a very good and ready sale for all he had time to manufacture. By his patient and incessant industry, he had earned a comfortable living for many years for his blind and aged mother, to whom he was a most dutiful and tender son. Never a penny of Fritz's money was spent in idle folly, for neither gay ribbons for his hat nor silver buckles for his shoes ever wiled away his earned money from its

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