was a healthy boy, and it did not hurt him
to live mostly on bread and butter. Sometimes he bought a little pie
or a handful of raisins.

Long before he was a man, people said, "How much the boy knows!" This
was because--

He did not waste his time.

He read good books.

He saw things for himself.

HOW FRANKLIN FOUND OUT THINGS.

Frank-lin thought that ants know how to tell things to one another. He
thought that they talk by some kind of signs. When an ant has found a
dead fly too big for him to drag away, he will run off and get some
other ant to help him. Frank-lin thought that ants have some way of
telling other ants that there is work to do.

One day he found some ants eating mo-las-ses out of a little jar in a
closet. He shook them out. Then he tied a string to the jar, and hung
it on a nail in the ceiling. But he had not got all the ants out of
the jar. One little ant liked sweet things so well that he staid in
the jar, and kept on eating like a greedy boy.

[Illustration: Ants talking (magnified)]

At last when this greedy ant had eaten all that he could, he started
to go home. Frank-lin saw him climb over the rim of the jar. Then the
ant ran down the outside of the jar. But when he got to the bottom, he
did not find any shelf there. He went all round the jar. There was no
way to get down to the floor. The ant ran this way and that way, but
he could not get down.

[Illustration: An Ants Feeler (magnified)]

At last the greedy ant thought he would see if he could go up. He
climbed up the string to the ceiling. Then he went down the wall. He
came to his own hole at last, no doubt.

After a while he got hungry again, perhaps. He thought about that jar
of sweets at the end of a string. Then perhaps he told the other ants.
Maybe he let them know that there was a string by which they could get
down to the jar.

In about half an hour after the ant had gone up the string, Franklin
saw a swarm of ants going down the string. They marched in a line, one
after another. Soon there were two lines of ants on the string. The
ants in one line were going down to get at the sweet food. The ants in
the other line were marching up the other side of the string to go
home. Do you think that the greedy ant told the other ants about
the jar?

And did he tell them that there was a string by which an ant could get
there?

And did he tell it by speaking, or by signs that he made with his
feelers?

If you wa