. She
has heeled too far. The firing eases.

All the _Kearsarge_'s boats that are not disabled are manned and ready
to render assistance to the vanquished.

Not a moment too soon. The ill-fated ship heels to starboard, her stern
rising high in the air, her screws thrashing the fog in their upward
flight, the flag under which her brave defenders had so well fought
still waving at her trucks, and slowly sinks beneath the waves, sending
up columns of water from her hatchways, and engulfing her crew in the
mighty suction.

But few survivors were saved of the few hundred that had had victory so
nearly in their grasp.

THE SAD STORY OF THE MOUSE.

BY KATHARINE PYLE.

One winter, when mamma was ill,
And scarce could move at all,
There used to come a little mouse
From out the bedroom wall.

Mamma would scatter crumbs for it;
'Twas company, she said;
She liked to see it run about
While she was there in bed.

And when mamma was well again,
The mouse would still come out,
And nose around in search of food,
And scamper all about.

At last one day--oh dear! oh dear!--
A naughty boy was I;
I set a trap to catch that mouse;
I'm sure I don't know why.

I'd hardly closed the cupboard door
Before the thing went, Snap!
I was afraid to go and look
At what was in the trap.

At last I looked; the mouse was there!
I carried it away;
I never told a soul of it;
I could not play all day.

And after that mamma would say,
"Why, where's our little mouse?
It must have found some other place
I think, about the house."

But, oh, I'd give my bat and ball,
My kite and jackknife too,
To see that mouse run round again
The way it used to do.

SHOOTING THE CHUTE.

BY WALTER CLARK NICHOLS.

More swiftly than the lightest-feathered swallow wings her flight
southward in the fall, more rapidly than any railroad train in the world
sweeps along its iron road, you speed down a long slide at an angle of
about thirty-seven degrees. Your heart leaps into your throat as the
boat you are in strikes the water and skims unevenly over the surface of
a small pond, and then your heart comes back to its right place as you
find you are unhurt. Then you give a gasp of pleasure, and are ready to
try it all over again. For you have "shot the chute."

"Shooting the chute" is the invention of that intrepid swimmer and bold
paddler Cap