"It hath been showed me all that thou hast done
to thy mother."

So, all day, Ruth gleaned in Boaz's fields. At noon she ate bread and
parched corn with the others. Boaz commanded his reapers to let fall
large handfuls of grain, as they worked, for Ruth to gather, and at
night she took it all home to Naomi.

"Where hast thou gleaned to-day?" asked Naomi, when she saw the food
that Ruth had brought to her.

"The man's name with whom I wrought to-day is Boaz," said Ruth. And
Naomi said: "Blessed be he of the Lord--the man is near of kin unto
us."

So Ruth gleaned daily, and at the end of the barley harvest the good
man Boaz took Ruth and Naomi to live with him in his own house
forever.

BERT'S THANKSGIVING[14]

BY J. T. TROWBRIDGE.

Bert is a manly, generous, warm-hearted fellow. Other boys
will like to read how good luck began to come his way on a
certain memorable Thanksgiving Day.

At noon, on a dreary November day, a lonesome little fellow, looking
very red about the ears and very blue about the mouth, stood kicking
his heels at the door of a cheap eating house in Boston, and offering
a solitary copy of a morning paper for sale to the people passing.

[Footnote 14: From "Young Joe," Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company.]

But there were really not many people passing, for it was Thanksgiving
Day, and the shops were shut, and everybody who had a home to go to
and a dinner to eat seemed to have gone home to eat that dinner, while
Bert Hampton, the newsboy, stood trying in vain to sell the last
"extry" left on his hands by the dull business of the morning.

An old man, with a face that looked pinched, and who was dressed in a
seedy black coat and a much-battered stovepipe hat, stopped at the
same doorway, and, with one hand on the latch, appeared to hesitate
between hunger and a sense of poverty before going in.

It was possible, however, that he was considering whether he could
afford himself the indulgence of a morning paper (seeing it was
Thanksgiving Day); so, at least, Bert thought, and accosted him
accordingly.

"Buy a paper, sir? All about the fire in East Boston, and arrest of
safe-burglars in Springfield. Only two cents!"

The little old man looked at the boy with keen gray eyes, which seemed
to light up the pinched and skinny face, and answered in a shrill
voice that whistled through white front teeth:

"You ought to come down in your price this time of day. You can't
expec