I know where it should be, but I am not
going to put it in my map. The Queen is angry with China now, so it has
no right to have a place in the world at all.'" The spirit of
exclusiveness manifested by the little lady might readily be quarrelled
with in some quarters; but surely the act gives promise of a Queen who,
like her to whom she was loyal, will, when her glory cometh--though, may
it be far distant--prove the pride of every loyal Briton!

The somersaultic cleverness by which a child will get out of an awkward
situation has been often revealed, but seldom with more humour than in
the two succeeding illustrations. A minister returning from church
towards the manse on a Sunday, came suddenly on a boy leaning earnestly
over the parapet of a bridge with a short rod and a long string having a
baited hook on the far end, by which he was trying his luck in the burn
beneath. "Boy," he exclaimed severely, "is this a day on which you
should be catching fish?" "Wha's catchin' fish?" drawled the budding
Isaac Walton; "I'm juist tryin' to droon this worm." The next boy was
yet cleverer--alike in fishing and in speech. He had several trout
dangling from his hand by a string when he met the minister abruptly in
a quick bend of the road. There was no chance of escape; but his ready
wit saved him. He walked boldly forward, and taking the first word as
the two were about to meet, he dangled the trout-hand high, looked the
minister square in the face, and exclaimed, "That sorts them for
snappin' at flees on the Sabbath!" and passed hence, leaving his
anticipated accuser flabbergasted.

Ruskin says of children: "They are forced by nature to develop their
powers of invention, as a bird its feathers of flight;" and we might
add, remarks another writer, "that the inventive faculty, like a bird,
is apt, when fully grown, to fly away. Then, when their own imaginative
resources begin to fail them, one observes children begin to read books
of adventure with avidity--at the age, say, of ten or twelve years.
Before that, no Rover of the Andes or Erling the Bold can equal the
heroic achievements they evolve from their inner consciousness." Who,
for instance, could hope to "put a patch" on the experience of those two
little boys who spent a snowy day during the Christmas holidays
tiger-shooting in their father's dining-room; and as one, making his
cautious way among the legs of the dinner-table, for the nonce a
pathless jungle, was hailed by t