THE HAPPY LITTLE ALCOTTS

"Those Concord days were the happiest of my life," wrote the author of Little Women, "for we had charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings, Haw

light of the household. The children played all manner of plays with them, tended them in sickness, buried them with funeral honors, and Louisa has embalmed their memory in the story," The Seven Black Cats," in Aunt Jo's Scrapbag. Dolls were and equal source of pleasure. The imaginative children hardly recognized them as manufactured articles, but endowed them with life and feeling. Louisa put her dolls through every experience of life; they were fed, educated, punished, rewarded and nursed. Care of dolls and kindly attention to dumb animals is helpful in molding child-character.

SLEIGH BELLS

Hear the sledges with the bells,

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight.

-Edgar Allan Poc.

RUSSIAN MERRY-MAKING

Russia, the land of snow and ice, of poverty and black bread, is a land of many holidays. What with Pussy Willow Fairs, preceding Palm Sun

A RUSSIAN SLEIGH

day, Easter, "Bride Shows" at Whitsuntide, Harvest Festivals, Christmas, New Year, the "Blessing of the Water," and St. George's Day and other saints' days too numerous to mention, a fair proportion of the Russian's time is given over to merrymaking.

Winter is the city's gala season. The great national pastimes are skating and sleighing. Everybody skates and everybody sleighs. The milkman.

brings the milk in a sleigh, the postman the letters; and as the arrival of your friends, your groceries, or your good news alike announced by the sound of merry sleigh-bells, you find yourself listening with peculiar eagerness for their merry jingle.

GREEN GRASS UNDER THE SNOW

The work of the sun is slow,

But as sure as heaven, we know;

So we'll not forget, when the skies are wet,

There's green grass under the snow.

When the winds of Winter blow,

Wailing like voices of woe,

There are April showers, and buds and flowers,
And green grass under the snow.

We'll find that it's ever so

In this life's uneven flow;

We've only to wait, in the face of fate,

For the green grass under the snow.

PLAYING BO-PEEP WITH THE STAR
"Who are you winking at, bright little star?
Hanging alone, way up ever so far;

Trembling and flashing aloft in the blue,—
Answer my question, and answer me true."

She stood by the window all ready for bed,
Yet lingered to hear what the little star said;
But naught would it do but wink its bright eye,
Alone by itself in the depths of the sky.

“I fear you are dumb," said the wee, little sprite,
"Or else you would answer my question to-night;
We whisper and talk to each other down here,——
I think you could speak if you chose to, my dear."

What do you think that the little star did?
It wilfully slipped out of sight, and was hid
By a snip of a cloud that floated close by,
And never vouchsafed her a wink or reply.

But after awhile, when she woke in the night,
The first thing she saw was that little star's light.

It twinkled and twinkled, and roused her from sleep,

"Ah, ha!" laughed the child," we can both play bo-peep!'

THE YEAR'S HOLIDAY

Snow storms bring back our boyhood experience. Reared among the hills of Western Connecticut, we were brought up in the very school of the snow. We remember the dreamy snow-falls, when great flakes came down wavering through the air as if they had no errand, and were sauntering for mere laziness. The air thickens. One by one familiar objects are hidden as by a mist. Paths disappear. Voices of teamsters are heard, but nothing in the road can be seen. Like a fog, the snow, fast falling, hides all things. The fences are grotesquely muffled; evergreens bend, being burdened. Even the bare branches of deciduous.

trees are clothed as with wool. Night is shutting in.

There is no use of looking out any more: all is black. Drop the curtains. Throw on the logs. The flames fill the whole room with a warm glow. Draw

round the table.

What a morning! The sun is up. The snow has buried the kitchen door. Fences are all gone. It is a new land, a fairy land! Yonder is the top of a haystack, and beyond, the roofs of the sheds. Two or three feet of snow on a level, that will lie for two months! As soon as the snow hardens a little, one can

take his own direction across the country. Not a fence can be seen. Swamps can now be entered safely. The streams need no bridges. The woods are full of men getting out the year's fuel. Every one is glad. Snow now is the poor man's friend, and the working man's helper; while all the young people who love frolic are getting ready for sleigh-rides. Winter in the country is the year's holiday.-Henry Ward Beecher.