his little cabinet
He calls,--"Cuckoo, cuckoo!"

Though but a toy,
Yet might the giddiest girl or boy
Learn three most pleasant truths from it:
How patiently to wait,
How to give greeting graciously,
And never to be too late.

'Tis sweet to hear,
Though oft repeated, a word of cheer;
So this little comrade on the wall,
This bird that never flew,
Is an hourly comfort, with his call,
"Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!"

MRS. CLARA DOTY BATES.

DAVY'S GIRL.

ALEX. DUKE BAILIE.

She was only five years old, hardly that, but a stout, healthy little
creature, full of love and fun, but often hard to manage.

Maggie was her name, but she would call herself nothing but "Davy's
girl."

Davy, her brother, a brave, good boy, about fifteen years of age, was
all she had to cling to, and she was his only treasure. They were
orphans; their father had been drowned, with many other poor
fishermen, when Maggie was a wee baby, and the mother, soon after,
died, from worry and hard work.

So these two were all alone in the world, but they did not feel
lonely, for each one was all the world to the other.

They lived with an old fisherman and his wife, on the shores of the
ocean, in New Jersey; and in the inlets and about outside, Davy used
to go with the men, in the boats, and help them fish; sometimes he
would work in-shore, for the truck farmers; sometimes help to gather
the salt hay from the marshes. He would work hard at any thing so as
to make money to keep his little sister comfortable and to give her
all it was well for her to have.

In winter he would tramp through cold and snow and storms, several
miles, to the little town where the school was, and so, every year, he
gained a few weeks of instruction.

The people among whom these orphans lived were rough, but
kind-hearted, and Davy always had enough work to enable him to earn
money sufficient to keep Maggie and himself in the simple way in which
every body about them lived.

Whenever he had an idle half-day, or even a few hours, he would take
the little girl and his books, and go down to the shore, and getting
into one of the boats always to be found drawn up on the sand, he
would study hard to learn, for he was anxious to get on in the world,
not only for his own, but his sister's sake, and Maggie would take one
of the books, and open it, and run her little fat finger over