"You think I am dead," The quick grass said, "Because I have parted with stem and blade! But under the ground I am safe and sound With the snow's thick blanket over me laid. Should the spring of the year But I pity the flower without branch or root." "You think I am dead," A soft voice said, "Because not a branch or root I own! I never have died, But close I hide In a plumy seed that the wind has sown. I shall laugh at you, then, Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers." - Edith M. Thomas, in St. Nicholas. Spell: withered, plumy, mosses, thorns, sown. Imagine yourself a day's journey above the Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through the forest, and as soon as you fairly enter the woods the gray mountain peaks are lost to view. The ground is littered with tree-trunks that lie crossed and recrossed. Making your way through the wilderness, after an hour or two you come to a glacier meadow. The trees press forward around the meadow, planting their feet on its margin, and holding themselves erect like soldiers on parade. The robins feeding on the sod belong to the species you have known since childhood, and these daisies, larkspurs, and golden-rods are the very friend-flowers of the old home garden. Bees hum as in a harvest noon, and butterflies waver above the flowers. The sod comes curving down to the water's edge. Here you find mats of the curious dwarf willow, scarce an inch high, yet sending up a multitude of gray, silky catkins. The floating grass panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their midst, so fine are they. Parting the grasses and looking more closely you may trace the branching of their shining stems, and note the beauty of their mist of flowers, the glumes exquisitely penciled, the yellow, dangling stamens and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest leaves you discover a fairy realm of mosses, their spore-cups daintily poised on polished shafts. Caterpillars, black beetles, and ants roam the wilds of this lower world. making their way through little groves and thickets like bears in a thick wood. And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air. Dragon-flies zigzag in swarms. Humming-birds are quite common here, and the robin is always. found along the margin of the stream, and sometimes the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious, fluffy chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end; woodpeckers swing across from side to side in graceful curves - birds, insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep summer joy. Definitions. — Glacier Meadow, a natural park leveled ages ago by the movement of a great ice - river called a glacier. Glaciers were once numerous in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and their action resulted in numerous glacier meadows and mountain lakes. Margin, edge. Species, kind. Spore, the seed of a flowerless plant. Glume, the husk of grains or grass; chaff. Panicles, irregularly branching flowers, such as are seen in oats and grasses. Catkins, long, downy spikes of flowers like those of a willow tree. Dwarf, below the ordinary size. Pistil, the part of a flower that bears the seed cradle; generally a slender tube, or thread, in the center of the flower. Fluffy, soft and downy. Spell: Yosemite, littered, wilderness, soldiers, parade, species, daisies, caterpillars, fluffy, precious, beetles, panicles, glume, dwarf. Where is the Yosemite Valley? If you were "a day's journey above the Yosemite Valley," in what direction from the valley would you be? Examine the spore - cups of the moss and tell how they look. Watch the willow catkins in spring and tell how they change. 65. THE GLADNESS OF NATURE. Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, When our mother Nature laughs aroundWhen even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground? There are notes of joy from the hang - bird and wren, The clouds are at play in the azure space, And their shadows at play in the bright green vale, And here they stretch to the frolic chase, And there they roll on the easy gale. There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower, There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea. William Cullen Bryant. Did you ever see the shadow of a cloud? Copy and learn: Under the greenwood tree And tune his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither: But winter and rough weather. -Shakespeare. SUPPLEMENTAL LESSONS. To be read by the Teacher to the Pupils. 1. A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR. There was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of God, who made the lovely world. They used to say to each other, sometimes, "Supposing all the children upon the earth were to die, would the flowers, and the water, and the sky be sorry?" They believed they would be sorry. For, said they, the buds are the children of the flowers; and the little playful streams that gambol down the hill-sides are the children of the water; and the smallest bright specks, playing at hide-and-seek in the sky all night, must surely be the children of the stars; and they would all be grieved to see their playmates, the children of men, no more. There was one clear, shining star that used to come out in the sky before the rest, near the church spire above the graves. It was larger and more beautiful, they thought, than all the others; and every night they watched for it, standing hand in hand at a window. Whoever saw it first, cried out, "I see the star!" And often they cried out both together, knowing so well when it would rise, and where. So they grew to be such friends with it, that before lying down in their beds they always looked out once again, to bid it good-night; and when |