any hive,
They do not sting like wasps, and bees, and hornets,
And to be as good as they are we should strive.
"I should like to be a beautiful butterfly,
All yellow, and blue, and green, and red;
But I should not like
To have Dan put camphor on my poor little head."

This unusual burst of genius brought down the house, and Demi was
obliged to read it again, a somewhat difficult task, as there was no
punctuation whatever, and the little poet's breath gave out before he
got to the end of some of the long lines.

"He will be a Shakespeare yet," said Aunt Jo, laughing as if she would
die, for this poetic gem reminded her of one of her own, written at the
age of ten, and beginning gloomily,

"I wish I had a quiet tomb,
Beside a little rill;
Where birds, and bees, and butterflies,
Would sing upon the hill."

"Come on, Tommy. If there is as much ink inside your paper as there is
outside, it will be a long composition," said Mr. Bhaer, when Demi had
been induced to tear himself from his poem and sit down.

"It isn't a composition, it's a letter. You see, I forgot all about its
being my turn till after school, and then I didn't know what to have,
and there wasn't time to read up; so I thought you wouldn't mind my
taking a letter that I wrote to my Grandma. It's got something about
birds in it, so I thought it would do."

With this long excuse, Tommy plunged into a sea of ink and floundered
through, pausing now and then to decipher one of his own flourishes.

"MY DEAR GRANDMA, I hope you are well. Uncle James sent me a pocket
rifle. It is a beautiful little instrument of killing, shaped like
this [Here Tommy displayed a remarkable sketch of what looked like
an intricate pump, or the inside of a small steam-engine] 44 are the
sights; 6 is a false stock that fits in at A; 3 is the trigger, and 2
is the cock. It loads at the breech, and fires with great force and
straightness. I am going out shooting squirrels soon. I shot several
fine birds for the museum. They had speckled breasts, and Dan liked
them very much. He stuffed them tip-top, and they sit on the tree quite
natural, only one looks a little tipsy. We had a Frenchman working here
the other day, and Asia called his name so funnily that I will tell
you about it. His name was Germain: first she called him Jerry, but we
laughed at her, and she changed it to Jeremiah; but ridicule was
the result, so it becam