es are all covered up, and before he knows it the dogs
have caught him, and your mother will have stewed rabbit for supper.
It seems a hard fate for the poor little fellow, but he was born
partly for that purpose.

When you have caught your rabbit, and come back to where the men are
cutting wood, you will be just as proud to tell the boy who is cutting
up the branches all about your splendid hunt, as if you had chased and
killed a stag.

"There's where we started him!" you will cry, "and away he scudded,
over there among the chestnuts, and Rover right at his heels, and when
we got down there to the creek, Rover turned heels-over-head on the
ice, he was going so fast; but I gave one slide right across, and just
up there, by the big walnut, the other two dogs got him!"

That boy is almost as much excited as you are, and he would drop his
axe in one minute, and be off with you on another chase, if his father
were not there.

And now you find that you have reached the wood-cutters exactly in
time, for that great tree is just about to come down.

There go the top-branches, moving slowly along through the tops of the
other trees, and now they move faster, and everything begins to crack;
and, with a rush and a clatter of breaking limbs, the great oak comes
crashing down; jarring the very earth beneath your feet, and making
the snow fly about like a sparkling cloud, while away run the dogs,
with their tails between their legs.

The tree is down now, and you will want to be home in time for dinner.
Farmer Brown's sled has just passed, and if you will cut across the
woods you can catch up with him, and have a ride home, and tell him
all about the rabbit-hunt, on the way.

If it is Saturday, and a holiday, you will be out again this
afternoon, with some of the other boys, perhaps, and have a grand
hunt.

Suppose it is snowing, what will you care? You will not mind the snow
any more than if it were a shower of blossoms from the apple-trees in
May.

TRICKS OF LIGHT.

[Illustration]

There is nothing more straightforward in its ways than light--when we
let it alone. But, like many of us, when it is introduced to the
inventions and contrivances of the civilized world, it often becomes
exceedingly fond of vagaries and extravagances.

Of all the companions of light which endeavor to induce it to forsake
its former simple habits, there is not one which has the influence
possessed by glass. When light and glass ge