A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple tree.

What plant we in this apple tree?
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
And redden in the August noon,
And drop when gentle airs come by,
That fan the blue September sky;

While children come, with cries of glee,
And seek them where the fragrant grass
Betrays their bed to those who pass,
At the foot of the apple tree.

And when, above this apple tree The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth;

And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine, And golden orange of the Line,

The fruit of the apple tree.

The fruitage of this apple tree Winds and our flag of stripe and star Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,

Where men shall wonder at the view

And ask in what fair groves they grew;

And sojourners beyond the sea
Shall think of childhood's careless day
And long, long hours of summer play,
In the shade of the apple tree.

But time shall waste this apple tree.
Oh! when its aged branches throw
Their shadows on the world below,
Shall fraud and force and iron will
Oppose the weak and helpless still?

What shall the task of mercy be
Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears
Of those who live when length of years
Is wasting this apple tree?

"Who planted this old apple tree?"

The children of that distant day
Thus to some aged man shall say;
And, gazing on its mossy stem,
The gray-haired man shall answer them:
"A poet of the land was he,

Born in the rude but good old times;
'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes.
On planting the apple tree."

green'sward, turf green with grass.
Cin'tra, a town in Portugal, remark-

able for its beauty and pleasant
climate.

the Line, the equator; here, the warm countries near the equator.

so'journ er, one who dwells in a place for a time as a stranger.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878), is one of the greater American poets. "Thanatopsis," "To a Waterfowl" and "The Forest Hymn," are among his best poems.

FOOT-BALL AT RUGBY

THOMAS HUGHES

"BUT why do you wear white trousers in November?" said Tom. He had been struck by this peculiarity in the costume of almost all the schoolhouse boys.

"Why, don't you know? know? No, I forgot. Why, to-day's the schoolhouse match. Our house plays the whole of the school at foot-ball. And we all wear white trousers to show them we don't care for hacks. You're in luck to come to-day. You will just see a match; and Brooke's going to let me play in quarters. That's more than he'll do for any other lower-school boy, except James, and he's fourteen." Who's Brooke?"

"Why, that big fellow who called over at dinner, to be sure. He's head of the schoolhouse side, and the best kick and charger in Rugby."

"Oh, but do show me where they play? And tell me about it. I love foot-ball so, and have played all my life. Won't Brooke let me play?”

66

Not he," said East, with some indignation. Why, you don't know the rules- you'll be a month learning them. And then it's no joke playing in a match, I can tell you. It is quite another thing from your private-school games. Why, there have been two collar-bones broken this half, and a dozen

fellows lamed. And last year a fellow had his leg broken."

Tom listened with the profoundest respect to this chapter of accidents, and followed East across the level ground till they came to a sort of gigantic gallows of two poles eighteen feet high, fixed upright in the ground some fourteen feet apart, with a cross-bar running from one to the other at the height of ten feet or thereabouts.

"This is one of the goals," said East, "and you see the other across there, right opposite, under the doctor's wall. The match is for the best of three goals. Whichever side kicks two goals wins; and it won't do, you see, just to kick the ball through these posts, it must go over the cross-bar; any height will do, so long as it's between the posts.

You'll have to stay in goal to touch the ball when it rolls behind the posts, because if the other side touch it, they have a try at goal. Then we fellows in quarters, we play just about in front of goal here, and have to turn the ball and kick it back before the big fellows on the other side can follow it up. And in front of us all the big fellows play, and that's where most of the scrimmages are."

Tom's respect increased as he struggled to make out his friend's technicalities, and the other set to work to explain the mysteries of "off your side," "drop-kicks," "punts," "places," and the other intricacies of the great science of foot-ball.