spended breath, and watched the look that comes but once,
flit over his cherub face. And yet, "little Benny," my tears are
falling; for, _somewhere_, I know there's an empty crib, a vacant
chair, useless robes and toys, a desolate hearth-stone, and a weeping
mother.

"Little Benny!"

It was all her full heart could utter; and it was enough. It tells the
whole story.

A RAP ON SOMEBODY'S KNUCKLES.

It is very strange my teacher never says a kind word to me. I am quite
sure I say my lessons well. I haven't had an "error" since I came to
school six months ago. I haven't been "delinquent" or "tardy." I have
never broken a rule. Now there's Harry Gray, that fat boy yonder, with
the dull eyes and frilled shirt-collar, who never can say his lesson
without some fellow prompts him. He comes in half an hour after school
begins, and goes home an hour before it is done, and eats pea-nuts all
the time he stays; he has all the medals, and the master is always
patting him on the head, and smiling at him, and asking him "if the
room is warm enough," and all that; I don't see through it.

My dear, honest, conscientious, unsophisticated little Moses! if you
only knew what a rich man Harry Gray's father was; what nice old wine
he keeps in his cellar; how easy his carriage cushions are; what nice
nectarines and grapes ripen in his hot house; and how much "the master"
is comforted in his inner and outer man thereby, you'd understand how
the son of such a nabob couldn't be anything but an embryo "Clay," or
"Calhoun," or "Webster,"--though he didn't know "B from a buzzard."

Are you aware, my boy, that your clothes, though clean and neat, are
threadbare and patched?--that your mother is a poor widow, whom nobody
knows?--that no "servant man" ever brought your satchel to school for
you?--that you have positively been seen carrying a loaf of bread home
from the grocer's?--and that "New Year's day" passed by, without your
appropriating any of your mother's hard earnings to make "a present" to
your disinterested and discriminating teacher? How can you be anything
but the dullest and stupidest boy in the school? It is a marvel to me
that "the master" condescends to hear you recite at all.

Stay a bit, Moses; don't cry; hold on a while. If your forehead tells
the truth, you'll be President of the United States by and by. Then,
"the master" (quite oblivious of Harry Gray,) will go strutting round,
telling all creation and his cousin,