gation, but in the queerest possible way.

With all its other eccentricities, the Missouri River leaks badly; for
you know there are leaky rivers as well as leaky boats. The government
engineers once measured the flow of the Missouri away up in Montana, and
again some hundred miles further down stream. To their surprise, they
found that the Missouri, instead of growing bigger down stream, as every
rational river should, was actually 20,000 second-feet[1] smaller at the
lower point.

[Footnote 1: The volume of rivers is measured by the number of cubic
feet of water flowing past a given point every second. The breadth of
the river is multiplied by its average depth, and the ascertained speed
of the current gives the number of cubic feet of water flowing by the
point of measurement each second. This will explain the term
second-feet.]

Now, while 20,000 second-feet could be spared from such a tremendous
river, that amount of water makes a considerable stream of itself. Many
very celebrated rivers never had so much water in their lives. Hence
there was great amazement when the discrepancy was discovered. But of
late years Dakota farmers away to the south and east of those points on
the Missouri, sinking artesian wells, found immense volumes of water
where the geologists said there would n't be any. So it is believed that
the farmers have tapped the water leaking from that big hole in the
Missouri River away up in Montana; and from these wells they irrigate
large tracts of land, and, naturally, they don't want the river-bed
mended. Fancy what a blessing it is, when the weather is dry, to have a
river boiling out of your well, ready to flow where you want it over the
wheat-fields! For of all manner of work that a river can be put to,
irrigation is, I think, the most useful. But isn't that a queer way for
the Missouri to wander about underneath the ground?

THE WATERMELON STOCKINGS

BY ALICE CALDWELL HEGAN

(Author of "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch")

"Jes' look at dat ornery little nigger!" exclaimed Aunt Melvy, as she
deposited a basket of clothes on the cabin floor. "I lef her to clean
up, an' to put de 'taters on to bile, an' to shoo de flies offen de
twinses, an' I wisht you 'd look at her!"

Nell Tracy, who had come down with Aunt Melvy from the big house on the
hill, viewed the culprit ruefully. 'Mazin' Grace was Aunt Melvy's eighth
daughter, and had been named for her mother's favorite hymn, which be