she crept down to the parlor as quietly as a mouse:
The maids were in the kitchen, and no one else in the house.
And when the key in the doorway the dear little mischief heard,
She whistled away so sweetly, they thought it was surely the bird.
Hither and thither she flitted, behind the sofa and chairs;
Her mother cried, "Mercy, Edward! the bird! Is the cat down stairs?"

Wildly they stared around them, till, "It's me, it is me, papa!"
Said Maud, from her corner springing. Ah, then what a loud "Ha! ha!"
Rang through the room. Her father, convulsed, on the sofa sat.
Gravely appeared among them their sober old pussy cat.
Maud merrily laughed and shouted, "A cunning old cat like you--
To think _you_ should mistake me for a little canary too!"

MODEL YACHT-BUILDING.

A SLOOP-YACHT.

The boat here described is a model of a sloop-yacht of about fifteen
tons measurement, forty-four feet long, and fifteen feet beam; the
model, on a scale of half an inch to the foot, being consequently
twenty-two inches long, on the water-line, and seven and a half inches
wide. The wood should be a block of clear dry pine, twenty-five inches
long, seven and a half inches wide, and five inches thick, the sides
being first planed square; then on one of the five-inch sides lines are
drawn two inches apart across the block; the water-line (W L, Fig. 2) is
drawn two inches and thirteen-sixteenths from the top at the end
selected for the bow, and two inches and five-sixteenths at the stern;
the stern-post (_s t_) is laid off, and the outer line of the stern
(_t f_); and finally the curved lines _a f_ and _a v_ are drawn,
completing what is called the sheer plan.

In copying from the drawings it must be kept in mind that they are
exactly one-fourth the full size, so that any distance taken from them
with the dividers must be laid off four times on the block.

To copy the curved lines, their distance from some line, as A B or W L,
is measured on each of the two-inch lines, by which a number of points
on the curve are found, and a line drawn as nearly as possible through
all of them by means of a flexible ruler, held in place by pins.

The block must now be cut away to the outline _a f t s v_, after which
lines two inches apart are drawn on the top, the line A B drawn entirely
around the block in the centre of the top, bottom, and ends, and Fig. 1
drawn on top, both halves being of course the same.

The block is nex