up the great harbor, and
anchored in Gravesend Bay. It was composed of two fifty-gun ships and
one of forty, with six hundred soldiers. The consternation in the city
was great; but Governor Stuyvesant ordered the guns to be run out on the
fort at the end of Broadway, called out the militia, and prepared for a
desperate contest.

MASTER NOBLE'S LESSON.

BY MRS. ANNIE A. PRESTON.

When Master Noble was appointed to take charge of the Oak Bridge
schools, he found, much to his surprise, that in every grade, from the
Primary to the High Schools, there were many pupils who had frequently
been promoted to higher classes, but, failing to get their lessons
during the first term, had, at examination, been sent back to a lower
grade again.

This had become such a common occurrence in the schools in Oak Bridge
that the spirit of honest and praiseworthy emulation was lost, and the
pupils felt it to be no humiliation or disgrace to be dropped from a
higher class to a lower one.

"Something must be done to impress upon them the disgrace of such
indifference, and to arouse their ambition," thought the new master, and
he forthwith invited all the young folks in the community to meet him
the next Saturday afternoon at the Town-hall to listen to a story that
he would tell.

Of course the promise of a story from the popular new master, and the
fact that he had recently returned from extensive travels, called the
children and young people all out, and this is what they heard:

"It is said that years ago a beautiful little brown sparrow made her
home in the garden of a certain great and renowned magician. She built
her nest in the grass, and was content to hop and chirp about in the
rose thicket, and to keep very near the ground indeed.

"She might have been happy enough had she not allowed herself to be
afraid of the robin-redbreast that had a nest in the golden sweet
apple-tree, and was always fluttering down and hop-hop-hopping across
the grass-plot, and pecking this way and that at the smaller birds.

"The wise and tender-hearted magician, who had been closely watching
proceedings, had so much sympathy for the timid, trembling little
sparrow that he said, 'She shall have a chance in the world,' and he
forthwith changed her into a robin.

"No sooner had she got over the novelty of her new situation than she
began to be afraid of the pigeon-hawk that came sailing down from the
wood near by in search of prey. So the ma