Elizabeth Barrett Browning.... 360 CXIX. ELIZABETH AND JOHN ESTAUGH...H. W. Longfellow... LIST OF AUTHORS. HOLLAND, J. G., 33, 80, 145, 192, 382. IRVING, WASHINGTON, 62, 98, 125, 281. SHELDON'S FIFTH READER. I.— BOYS ON THE FARM. SAY what you will about the general uselessness of boys, it is my impression that a farm without a boy would very soon come to grief. What the boy does, is the life of the farm. Upon him fall all the odds and ends, the most difficult things. It is understood, in the first place, that he is to do all the errands, go to the store, the post-office, and carry all sorts of messages. 2. If he had as many legs as a centipede, they would tire before night. His two short limbs seem to him entirely inadequate to the task. He would like to have as many legs as a wheel has spokes, and rotate about in the same way. This he sometimes tries to do; and people who have seen him "turning cart-wheels" along the side of the road, have supposed that he was amusing himself, and idling his time; he was only trying to invent a new mode of locomotion, so that he could economize his legs, and do his errands with greater dispatch. 3. He practices standing on his head, in order to accustom himself to any position. Leap-frog is one of his methods of getting over the ground quickly. He would willingly go on an errand, any distance, if he could leapfrog it with a few other boys. He has a natural genius for combining pleasure with business. This is the reason why, when he is sent to the spring for a pitcher of water, and the family are waiting at the dinner table, he is absent so long: for he stops to noke the from that cita |