pects, she
is generally provided with an abundance of excuses, and however mild the
reproof, she receives it as a piece of extreme severity.

"Throughout her whole deportment there is an air of indolence and a want
of interest in those exercises which should engage her attention. In her
seat, she most commonly sits in some lazy posture--either with her
elbows upon her desk, her head leaning upon her hands, or with her seat
tipped forward or backward. When she has occasion to leave her seat, it
is in a sauntering, lingering gait--perhaps some trick is contrived on
the way for exciting the mirth of her companions.

"About every thing in which it is possible to be so, she is untidy. Her
books are carelessly used, and placed in her desk without order. If she
has a piece of waste paper to dispose of, she finds it much more
convenient to tear it into small pieces and scatter it about her desk,
than to put it in a proper place. Her hands and clothes are usually
covered with ink. Her written exercises are blotted and full of
mistakes."

THE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING BEHINDHAND.

"The following incident, which I witnessed on a late journey,
illustrates an important principle, and I will relate it.

"When our steam-boat started from the wharf, all our passengers had not
come. After we had proceeded a few yards, there appeared among the crowd
on the wharf a man with his trunk under his arm, out of breath, and with
a most disappointed and disconsolate air. The captain determined to stop
for him; but stopping an immense steam-boat, moving swiftly through the
water, is not to be done in a moment; so we took a grand sweep, wheeling
majestically around an English ship which was at anchor in the harbor.
As we came toward the wharf again, we saw the man in a small boat coming
off from it. As the steam-boat swept round, they barely succeeded in
catching a rope from the stern, and then immediately the steam-engine
began its work again, and we pressed forward, the little boat following
us so swiftly that the water around her was all in a foam.

"They pulled upon the rope attached to the little boat until they drew
it alongside. They then let down a rope, with a hook in the end of it,
from an iron crane which projected over the side of the steam-boat, and
hooked it into a staple in the front of the small boat. '_Hoist away_!'
said the captain. The sailors hoisted, and the front part of the little
boat began to rise, the stern plowing