SHE had never had a birthday celebration before, without Mamma to kiss her in the morning, and wish her many happy returns, and to make the day bright and pleasant for her; and she did not know how she could have a happy day without her. So when her cousin Edith peeked in her door on that bright August morning of her ninth birthday, and shouted "Happy Birthday," Winnie Burton suddenly awoke feeling very sober.

A telegram had come the day before, and Mamma had gone away in great haste to see her father, who was Winnie's Grandpa Lee, who was very ill; and had taken baby sister Ruth, with her. Papa and Winnie and brother Ted had come to Grandma Burton's house to stay while Mamma was away.

Tears were very near her eyes, when her Aunt May leaned over her, and gave her nine kisses and one to grow on, and put something in her hand, all so quickly, that the tears did not have time to fall. She sat up in bed to see what she had given her, and found it was a pretty little leather purse, with a bright shining dime in it.

out of the hair brush as she raised it to brush out the tangles in her hair. Downstairs, she found Grandma and Grandpa Burton, Aunt May, and Papa to greet her with smiling faces and good wishes, and Papa squeezed her hand tight as he sat down by her, and she began to feel comforted somehow.

As soon as Aunt May had left the room, she began to dress, and in each shoe found another dime, which she put in her new purse, too. When she poured water into the washbowl she found another silver dime in the bowl, and when she brushed her teeth, there was another in the mug, and the soap dish held another, and one dropped

Another silver dime dropped out of her napkin, and one was in the spoon, when she began to eat her oatmeal, and when she counted them all, she found she had nine silver dimes.

When Papa kissed her "Goodbye," and told her to be a good girl, he handed Winnie a box of candy.

Aunt May was a very pretty young lady, and Winnie was very fond of her, so she ran to find her, to show her her box of candy, and share it with her.

When they opened the box together, Winnie was greatly surprised to find on top of the candy, a little note which said:

"At nine o'clock, if you are wise, You will look where the parlor hearth-rug lies."

Winnie patiently watched the big clock on the stairs and when it chimed nine, she ran quickly into the parlor, and lifted up the

rug. There was a long pasteboard box under it, which held a set of tiny embroidered handkerchiefs, each bearing her initial in the corner, and a little note which read thus:

"At ten o'clock you may see
A gift near the cherry tree."

Winnie was so delighted with this dainty present, that she only remembered the note when the

"WINNIE PATIENTLY WATCHED THE BIG CLOCK ON THE STAIRS."

clock began to strike. She ran out to the big cherry tree in the front yard, and under it on the green grass lay a fine doll, dressed completely from head to foot. Tied to the waist of the doll was another little note, which said:

"When eleven strokes you hear,

Go on the back porch, Winnie dear.”

Although Winnie enjoyed examining her doll, she had not time just then to really play with it. She was prompt at obeying the command, and ready to start for the back porch at the first stroke of the clock. A blue doll carriage, for all the world like a real one, only smaller, met her eye. She wheeled it over to the back porch where she had laid the doll. Tied to the wheel she saw a slip of paper. This one said: "At twelve o'clock you may be able

To find me at the dining-room table."

When Papa and Grandpa came home to lunch, they were told the story of the morning, and saw all the gifts and little notes. On Winnie's plate lay a small package which held a pretty tie, and this note besides:

"At one be at the kitchen door,

If of fun you want some more."

This time she was ahead of the clock and she saw Aunt May put a bowl of soap suds and two new bubble pipes on the steps at the kitchen door, and she ran up to her, and they began to blow bubbles as the big clock struck.

Grandma and Kate, the cook, came out to watch them, and all enjoyed looking at the pretty bubbles floating so gracefully in the air, with bright colors playing on their shining sides.

Presently Winnie saw that a little note lay by the side of the bowl which said:

"At the top of the stairs I'll wait for you,
When the big clock strikes the hour of two."

She was having such a good time blowing bubbles that the clock struck before she thought again of the note. When she ran up the stairs she saw on the step a shining top and string. It spun so easily, and hummed so prettily that at first Winnie did not see that a note also lay on the top step, which said:

"On the kitchen table you will see

Something nice as the clock strikes three." Aunt May came to see the new top spin, and went with her to the kitchen at three o'clock, where she found a plate of fine cookies. They were just in time to keep her from getting hungry, and she, brother Ted, Ruth and Aunt May ate every one. Under the last one she found a note, which said:

"At four straight to the hammock go,

You'll miss it if you are too slow."

the

The moment clock struck, off ran Winnie to the garden. In the hammock lay her brother Ted who looked up as she approached, pretending he had just wakened up and knew nothing. about the present. She found it, however, in a moment, carefully hidden under a magazine which Ted had been reading.

It was a lovely picture book, so tumbling her brother out she climbed up into the hammock, and looked through the book with the greatest delight.. Between the pages, she came across another little rhyme which said:

"Be neat and clean at the hour of five,

For the last treat is to be a drive."

As soon as Papa saw Winnie, he said: "Mamma telegraphed me that Grandpa Lee is better, and she will be home to-morrow."

After supper Winnie told Papa and Grandpa all about the surprises and the good times of

So after a while, Aunt May came out to her and they took all the gifts and notes and laid them on the table in the hall, to show to Papa, and to be ready also for Mamma when she should come home. Then Aunt May and she drove to the office for Grandpa and Papa.

the day, and she longed for the next day to come, so that she might see Mamma and show her treasures, and tell her how she had spent the day; and as she went off to bed she said to Aunt May, "This was a glorious birthday after all. I had nine surprises and nine silver dimes, and I think I had next to as good a birthday as if Mamma had been home."

RIGHT in the middle of a city in Ohio one river empties into another, and so the city is divided into three parts. It is really three towns sitting "catacornered" to each other, with the waters between them. One river is the murmuring Muskingum hurrying along between its big echoing hills, and the other is the lazy Licking flowing quietly between green garden banks and osier-fields and overhanging trees. Both of them have mills to turn. The blue Muskingum spreads out in the sun and shines like a mirror above its mill-dam, and then it tumbles down with a roar as it turns the mill and hurries away over the rocks as if it were angry at being caught and put at such a task. But the Licking spills itself smoothly into the Muskingum, and sings happily at its work. So you see even the lazy Licking does not get past here without doing some work, for the inhabitants are very industrious. Then the rivers unite their waters and make a stream deep enough to float barges full of crockery, and steamboats laden with all the things they make here, down to the Ohio and thence to the Mississippi and away to the Gulf of Mexico.

Now when it came to building a bridge to join that city together the wise men of the place saw that it would have to be a bridge with three ends. A queer bridge that would be, indeed; for who ever heard of a bridge with more than two ends to it? There was not such a thing in the United States. But they had to have it, and so they made it. And it was the only bridge of the kind in the world, except one in Switzerland that is somewhat like it. To look at it, one would think that each town had started to build a bridge out to the others, and all three bridges had met in the middle of the river. Each part of the

bridge had four hallways, two big ones for horses and two little ones for people walking. It had a shingled roof over all the length of it, and windows in the sides, so that it was a sort of house-bridge. When it rained you could go out on the river and be out of the wet. Where the bridges came together there was a big room out in the middle of the river, with the twelve hallways opening into it. Can you imagine what a roomful of horses and wagons and people that was, with the people of three towns all crossing from hall to hall as they came and went in different directions? Everybody in the three parts of the city had to come out here whenever they went to any of the others. And so they all met in the room out in the middle of the river, no matter where they were coming from or where they were going to.

But I had started to tell about a boy who lived in this queer city. Polite folks called him Dugald and his mother called him. "Duggy"; but the men and boys just called him "Dug," and so that came to be his name.

Dug was a little boy who had just learned Y and a part of O. He was studying O. Once, when he was studying it, he said to one of his grandfathers: "Take me out and show me where O is. Then I will know it like Y. If you don't show me where it is I won't ever, ever know it."

"Oh," said his grandfather, "there is no O. You could not cross an O; it would be impossible. You can only cross a Y."

Of course no one would know what was meant by such talk except the people who live in that city called Zanesville; for there they never speak of a bridge at all, but call it "the Y." Every day you can hear them talk of crossing the Y. And if you want to know