* *

Father had some peculiar ideas when he built our house, and the
dining-room juts out from the rest like a great bay-window--a room with
three sides of glass. We were at breakfast, discussing buckwheats
diligently, when father glanced down the roadway and began to laugh.

We turned, looked, and then rushed to the great windows in a crowd. Up
the drive with slow and solemn tread, swaying under the gale, pelted
with rain, came the valiant stampeders, a procession of blanket-mantled
figures in dingy white, the water dripping from their coverings in
streams, squashing and churning in their boots as they splashed
indifferently onward through mud or grass alike; such miserable-looking
rats!

Frank looked up with a wan attempt at a smile as he passed under the
windows and saw the rows of grinning faces looking down, but the rest
kept their eyes fixed upon the ground.

Father went out upon the piazza. "Good-morning, boys! out for a
constitutional? nothing better to get up an appetite," he said with a
cheerful smile.

Frank laughed; he really couldn't help it, although a moment before he
had been mad with himself, the horse, the rain, and the world in
general. As they looked at each other sheepishly out of the corner of
their eyes the rest took it in, and began to grin at the ludicrous sight
of themselves, and for a few minutes very great was the hilarity.

"That's right; that's right. A hearty laugh is good medicine! but you
will need something more, so in with you, quick!"

And before they knew it, they were running the gauntlet of the rest of
us, and scudding for the dormitory, from whence came presently a sound
as of mighty rubbing, and the flavor of Jamaica ginger. But they had to
stay in bed all day, to their great disgust, and "ginger" was a
dangerous word to mention for weeks after; and for two whole terms not
one of those boys were in any of the scrapes that were going on. "They
had been there!" they said, with a rueful smile, which we could
appreciate. As father used to say, "There's nothing like learning the
logical sequence of consequences!" And they had a big washing bill that
week.

THE DOUGHNUT BAIT.

A schoolboy a few weeks since told me of an amusing encounter that he
and his brother had just had with a bear. It was at Thanksgiving time,
and they were enjoying the few days' vacation in hunting in the Maine
woods. The locality, to be exact, was the north side of Roach River,
a