THE 

 STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE 



tiurxuin cor da 

 CHAPTER I 



THE SIX 



ONE evening, at twilight, they were assembled in 

 a group, all six of them. Uncle Paul was read- 

 ing in a large book. He always reads to rest him- 

 self from his labors, finding that after work nothing 

 refreshes so much as communion with a book that 

 teaches us the best that others have done, said, and 

 thought. He has in his room, well arranged on pine 

 shelves, books of all kinds. There are large and 

 small ones, with and without pictures, bound and 

 unbound, and even gilt-edged ones. When he shuts 

 himself up in his room it takes something very seri- 

 ous to divert him from his reading. And so they 

 say that Uncle Paul knows any number of stories. 

 He investigates, he observes for himself. When he 

 walks in his garden he is seen now and then to stop 

 before the hive, around which the bees are humming, 

 or under the elder bush, from which the little flowers 

 fall softly, like flakes of snow; sometimes he stoops 

 to the ground for a better view of a litle crawling 

 insect, or a blade of grass just pushing into view. 



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