poor mamma cry?" said my friend, who could no longer help
joining in the conversation.

"On account of her bills, sir," said the little fellow. "Father is dead,
and mother works very hard, but she cannot pay them all."

My friend took the child, and with him the large loaf, into his arms,
and I really believe he kissed them both. Meanwhile the baker's wife,
who did not dare to touch a cricket herself, had gone into the
bake-house. She made her husband catch four, and put them into a box
with holes in the cover, so that they might breathe. She gave the box to
the child, who went away perfectly happy.

When he had gone, the baker's wife and my friend gave each other a good
squeeze of the hand. "Poor little fellow!" said they both together. Then
she took down her account-book, and, finding the page where the mother's
charges were written, made a great dash all down the page, and then
wrote at the bottom, "Paid."

Meanwhile my friend, to lose no time, had put up in paper all the money
in his pockets, where fortunately he had quite a sum that day, and had
begged the good wife to send it at once to the mother of the little
cricket-boy, with her bill receipted, and a note, in which he told her
that she had a son who would one day be her pride and joy.

They gave it to a baker's boy with long legs, and told him to make
haste. The child, with his big loaf, his four crickets, and his little
short legs, could not run very fast, so that when he reached home, he
found his mother, for the first time in many weeks, with her eyes raised
from her work, and a smile of peace and happiness upon her lips.

The boy believed that it was the arrival of his four little black things
which had worked this miracle, and I do not think he was mistaken.
Without the crickets, and his good little heart, would this happy change
have taken place in his mother's fortunes?

P. J. STAHL

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM

It was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found:
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by:
And then the old man shook his he