5. Rewrite in your own words the paragraph beginning "Superiority makes every man feel its equal."

6. Condense into a paragraph the advice given by John Graham to his son in this letter.

SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS

1. Make a report on the Union Stockyards, Chicago. 2. What are the prominent meat-packing centers in this country?

3. Write a description of a country store.

4. Bring in a good business letter.

5. Write a letter on loyalty to your school.

6. Imagine that you received John Graham's letter. Write

an answer.

7. Write a letter of advice to a chum, telling him how to succeed in his line.

8. Write a letter to your teacher, suggesting ways in which the class work may be improved.

"Hung on like a terrier to a rat!" one old salt told me last winter, in speaking of the event. "Seemed to shake 'er too, same's if he had his teeth in 'er. Gosh! but I was skeered till I saw him come up and get his wind after that big sea hit him! Beat all what Captain 10 Tom would do in them days!"

It all occurred years before, when the old salt now bent and grizzled was as hale and hearty as Captain Scott himself.

We were at the time, the old salt included, watching 15 the movements of a sloop loaded with stone for the Light, -the property of an old man and his wife who could ill afford its loss. Owing to the bad seamanship of her captain, a man by the name of Baxter, the sloop had slipped her moorings from a safety buoy anchored within a hun- 20 dred yards of the Rock, had been sucked in by the eddy of the Race, and with sail up was plunging bow on toward the lighthouse foundation. The error meant the sinking of the sloop and perhaps the drowning of some of her crew. It meant, too, hopeless poverty for the old 25 man and his wife.

The weather had puzzled some of us since sunrise; little lumpy clouds showed near the horizon line, and sailing above these was a dirt spot of vapor, while aloft glowed some prismatic sun dogs, shimmering like opals. Etched against the distance, with a tether line fastened to the safety buoy, lay Baxter's sloop-her sails furled, her boom swinging loose and ready, the smoke from her hoister curling from the end of her smoke pipe thrust up out of the forward hatch.

Below us on the concrete platform rested our big air pump, and beside it stood Captain Scott. He was in his diving dress, and at the moment was adjusting the breastplates of lead, weighing twenty-five pounds each, to his chest and back. His leaden shoes were already on his feet. 15 With the exception of his copper helmet, the signal line around his wrist, and the life line about his waist he was ready to go below.

This meant that pretty soon he would don his helmet and, with a last word to his tender, would tuck his chin 20 whiskers inside the opening, wait until the faceplate was screwed on, and then with a nod behind the glass, denoting that air was coming all right, would step down his rude ladder into the sea to his place among the crabs and seaweed.

Baxter stepped gingerly along the sloop's rail; when he reached the foot of the bowsprit this answer came over 30 the water: "Let her blow! this sloop's chartered to deliver this stone. We've got steam up and the stuff's going over the side; git your divers ready. I ain't shoving no

baby carriage, and don't you forgit it. I'm comin' on! Cast off that buoy line, you-" (this to one of his men).

Captain Scott continued stripping off his leaden breast5 plate. He had heard his order repeated and knew that it had been given correctly, and the subsequent proceedings did not interest him. If Baxter had anything to say in answer, it was of no moment to him. His word was law on the Ledge; first, because the men daily trusted their 10 lives to his guidance, and, second, because they all loved him with a love hard for a landsman to understand, especially today, when the boss and the gang never, by any possibility, pull together.

"Baxter says he's coming on, sir," said the shoveler, 15 when he reached the captain's side, the grin on his sunburnt face widening until its two ends hooked over his ears. The shoveler had heard nothing so funny for weeks. "Comin' on!"

"That's what he hollered. Wants you to git ready to 20 take his stuff, sir."

I was out of the shanty now. I came in two jumps. With that squall whirling in from the eastward and the tide making flood, any man who would leave the protection of the spar buoy for the purpose of unloading 25 was fit for a lunatic asylum.

The captain had straightened up and was screening his eyes with his hand when I reached his side, his gaze riveted on the sloop, which had hauled in her tether line and was now drifting clear of the buoy. He was still 30 incredulous.

"No, he ain't comin'. Baxter's all right; he'll port his helm in a minute, but he'd better send up his jib,-" and he swept his eye around, "and that quick, too."