Kind remembrance keeps us near.

Yet sometimes a single letter
Turns the sunshine into shade;
Chills our efforts, clouds our prospects,
Blights our hopes and makes them fade.

Messengers of joy or sorrow,
Life or death, success, despair,
Bearers of affection's wishes,
Greetings kind or loving prayer.

Prayer or greeting, were we present,
Would be felt, but half unsaid;
We can write--because our letters--
Not our faces--will be read?

Who has not some treasured letters,
Fragments choice of other's lives;
Relics, some, of friends departed,
Friends whose memory still survives?

Touched by neither time nor distance,
Will their words unspoken last?
Voiceless whispers of the present,
Silent echoes of the past!

The Right Method of Composition

Never be in haste in writing:
Let that thou utterest be of nature's flow,
Not art's, a fountain's, not a pump's. But once
Begun, work thou all things into thy work:
And set thyself about it, as the sea
About the earth, lashing it day and night:
And leave the stamp of thine own soul in it
As thorough as the fossil flower in clay:
The theme shall start and struggle in thy breast,
Like to a spirit in its tomb at rising,
Rending the stones, and crying--Resurrection.

P. J. Bailey

[Illustration: Cat and Dog Sending Letters.]

[Page 95--Drawing Land]

[Illustration: Our Lady Artist.]

[Illustration: Our Gentleman Artist.]

[Illustration: The Sunday Fisherman--A story with Symbols.]

[Illustration: Drawing Pussy's Likeness.]

[Illustration: Working for a Prize.]

[Page 96--Drawing Land]

Just cast your beautiful, your sparkling,
your penetrating, your discriminating

[Illustration: Eyes.]

Over this page, and read, mark, learn,
and inwardly digest its Contents.

[Illustration: A Room Hung With Pictures Is A Room Hung With
Thoughts.]

THE two greatest educating powers in the ancient world were Pictures
and Poetry--the two greatest educating powers are pictures and
poetry still, and pictures and poetry blended in an interesting
manner is the intended educating feature of this
PLEASANT-LEARNING-LAND, but my object in this place is to speak of
pictures only, as perhaps the greatest of all educating powers, and
to demonstrate that they are not sufficiently used for educational
purposes. Firstly: pictures are in