y.

B. M.

[Illustration: "'I don't know what to do!'"]

DISCONTENT BRINGS DULNESS.

As Johnny by the window stood
And watched the cloudy sky,
He seemed in discontented mood
And soon was heard to sigh:
'I don't know what to do to-day;
There seems no fun at all;
At cricket there's no chance to play,
For I have lost the ball.

'And tops are seldom spun in May,
And if I had a kite
There's not a breath of air to-day
To help it in its flight.'
With peevish frown he left the room
And roamed the garden through,
And murmured in a tone of gloom:
'I don't know what to do.'

And thus all day he idly went
From dreary place to place,
The saddest gloom of discontent
For ever on his face;
And when the stars began to peep,
And night its shadows threw,
He murmured in his restless sleep:
'I don't know what to do.'

J. L.

NATURE'S NOBLEMEN.

It was said of a man who rose to a high position in the State through
his conscientiousness and high principles, that he was at one time a
shoeblack.

One day, meeting the son of Lord ----, he was accosted in a tone of
scorn: 'I remember when you blacked my father's boots.'

His answer came without anger, and as brave as true, '_Yes, and did I
not do it well?_'

THE BOY TRAMP.

(_Continued from page 148._)

By this time Mr. Parsons' peculiar proceedings were beginning to arouse
my suspicions. I could not fail to notice that he had twice told me to
make trifling purchases, and that, although he had received some pennies
in exchange for the first florin, he yet brought out a half-crown for
the wax lights. My dawning suspicions grew stronger on the way home on a
penny omnibus, when he offered the conductor another two-shilling piece.

The conductor was an amiable, talkative man, and Mr. Parsons had already
begun a conversation with him.

'Haven't you got anything smaller?' he asked, 'because I have been doing
nothing but giving change half the day.'

'Sorry I haven't,' said Mr. Parsons.

'Well, I shall have to give you a shilling's worth of coppers,' answered
the conductor.

'All right--all right, it can't be helped,' said Mr. Parsons, and, of
course, I knew that he had already several pennies in his pockets.

'There was the change out of the wax lights and the ginger-beer,' I
suggested.

'So there was,' he cried, with a s