ng in which he is not more or less puzzled; and
must try numberless experiments before he can bring his undertakings to
anything like perfection; even the simplest operations of domestic life
are not well performed without some experience; and the term of man's life
is half wasted before he has done with his mistakes and begins to profit
by his lessons.

7. The third distinction is that animals make no improvements; while the
knowledge, and skill, and the success of man are perpetually on the
increase. Animals, in all their operations, follow the first impulse of
nature or that instinct which God has implanted in them. In all they do
undertake, therefore, their works are more perfect and regular than those
of man.

8. But man, having been endowed with the faculty of thinking or reasoning
about what he does, is enabled by patience and industry to correct the
mistakes into which he at first falls, and to go on constantly improving.
A bird's nest is, indeed, a perfect structure; yet the nest of a swallow
of the nineteenth century is not at all more commodious or elegant than
those that were built amid the rafters of Noah's ark. But if we compare
the wigwam of the savage with the temples and palaces of ancient Greece
and Rome, we then shall see to what man's mistakes, rectified and improved
upon, conduct him.

9. "When the vast sun shall veil his golden light
Deep in the gloom of everlasting night;
When wild, destructive flames shall wrap the skies,
When ruin triumphs, and when nature dies;
Man shall alone the wreck of worlds survive;
'Mid falling spheres, immortal man shall live."
--Jane Taylor.

DEFINITIONS.--2. Dis-tinc'tion, a point of difference. Im'ple-ments,
utensils, tools. Wigwam, an Indian hut. 3. Bur'rows, holes in the earth
where animals lodge. 4. Dis-cus'sion, the act of arguing a point, debate.
5. Me-dic'i-nal, healing. 8. En-dowed', furnished with any gift, quality,
etc. Fac'ul-ty, ability to act or perform. Rec'ti-fied, corrected.

XCVI. THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT.

John Godfrey Saxe (b. 1816, d.1887), an American humorist, lawyer, and
journalist, was born at Highgate, Vt. He graduated at Middlebury College
in 1839; was admitted to the bar in 1843; and practiced law until 1850,
when he became editor of the "Burlington Sentinel." In 1851, he was
elected State's attorney. "Progress, a Satire, and Other Poems," his fi