4. Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and brought a large tench pouncing on the grass.

Tom was excited.

"O Magsie! you little duck! Empty the basket.”

Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences, when she listened to the light, dipping sound of the rising fish, the gentle rustling, as if the willows and the reeds and the water had their happy whisperings also. Maggie thought it would make a very nice heaven to sit by the pool in that way and never be scolded. She never knew she had a bite till Tom told her, but she liked fishing very much.

5. It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always be like the holidays; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the mill with its booming-the great chestnut-tree under which they played at houses—their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the water-rats, while Maggie gathered the purple, plumy tops of the reeds, which she forgot and dropped afterward-above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man-these things would always be just the

same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who lived on any other spot on the globe; and Maggie, when she read about Christiana passing "the river over which there is no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.

6. Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it-if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedge-rows, the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?

7. The wood I walk in this May-day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers, the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground-ivy at my feet-what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petaled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibers within me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, these wellremembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedge-rows-such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them.

Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us and transform our perception into love.

DEFINITIONS.-I. Pe cul'iar (pe kūl'yer), special. 2. Ra'di ant, beaming with happiness. 3. Awe, respect; reverence. 4. A'mi a ble, lovable; friendly. 5. Těnch, fish of the carp family. 6. Mär, spoil. 7. Ea'gre, a great wave or succession of waves. 8. Chris tian'a (Chris chǎn'a), Christian's wife in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, who sets out to join her husband in the Celestial City. 9. Glōbe, the earth. 10. Nov'el ty, a new or strange thing. 11. Mo not'o ny, lack of variety. 12. Per'son al'i ty, character. 13. Ca pri'cious, changeable; freakish. 14. Sub'tle, fine; refined. 15. In èx'tri ca ble, mingled. 16. Trans form', change.

LESSON XXIII.

Maggie Cuts Her Hair.

George Eliot.

PART I.

1. Maggie and Tom came from the garden with their father. Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly, coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl.

"Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears," said Mrs. Tulliver, looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted to whisper to Maggie a command to go and have her hair brushed.

2. "Well, and how do you do? and I hope you're good

children, are you?" said Aunt Glegg in a loud, empathtic way. "Look at me, now. Put your hair behind your ears, Maggie, and keep your frock on your shoulders."

"Well, my dears," said Aunt Pullet in a compassionate voice, "you grow wonderfully fast. I think the girl has too much hair. I'd have it thinned and cut shorter, sister, if I were you; it isn't good for her health.”

"No, no," said Mr. Tulliver, "the child's healthy enough; there's nothing ails her. But it would be as well if Bessy would have the child's hair cut, as it would lie smooth."

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3. "Maggie," said Mrs. Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her, and whispering in her ear; go and get your hair brushed-do, for shame! I told you not to come in without going to Martha first, you know I did."

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'Tom, come with me," whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough. Come upstairs with me, Tom," she whispered, when they were outside the door; "there's something I want to do before dinner."

4.

"There's no time to play at anything before dinner," said Tom, whose imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.

"O yes, there's time for this! Do come, Tom."

Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother's room, and saw her go at once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.

"What are they for, Maggie?" said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.

Maggie answered by seizing her locks and cutting them straight across the middle of her forehead.

5. "O my, Maggie! you'll catch it!" exclaimed Tom, "you'd better not cut any more off."

Snip went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking; and he couldn't help feeling it was rather good fun; Maggie would look so queer.

"Here, Tom, cut it behind for me," said Maggie, excited by her own daring and anxious to finish the deed.

"You'll catch it, you know!" said Tom, nodding his head in an admonitory manner, hesitating a little as he took the scissors.

"Never mind, make haste!" said Maggie, giving a little stamp with her foot.

6. The black locks were so thick-nothing could be more tempting to a lad who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony's mane. One delicious, grinding snip, and another, and another, and the hinder locks fell heavily to the floor; and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open plain.

"O Maggie!" said Tom, jumping round her and slapping his knees, as he laughed, "what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself in the glass; you look like the idiot we throw our nutshells to at school!"

7. Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly of her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her aunts by this very decided course of action. She didn't want her hair to look pretty-that was out of the question; she only