700 



GLEANINC4S IN BEE CULTUEE. 



Oct. 



with you, my friend, that every town should 

 have its entomologist, or, lacking that, some 

 juvenile to collect and preserve the bugs and 

 worms nnd butterflies that are common to it. 

 Your talk about the baby reminds me of 

 Huberts way of collecting such things. One 

 day his mamma poked her finger into his 

 mouth and fished out a cricket. 



THE BOYS' PICNIC. 



A KIND OF PICNIC THAT PAYS. 



RVING was stripping the blades trom the cane- 

 h stalks, in the truck-patch north of the house; 

 the day was hot, the sweat kept trickling down 

 under his ragged hat-brim— the cut places on 

 his hands smarted, and the big buckskin gloves 

 that he now wore to protect his hands were six 

 sizes too large for him, and he was tired and uncom- 

 fortable in every way; ho sat down on a pile of 

 blades and began to wonder why it was that birds 

 and colts and calves and snakes and lizards and 

 every thing could live without work, and little boys 

 could not— and he thought and thought, and slid 

 down lower and lower on the cane-blades, and pres- 

 ently he was fast asleep with the sun shining in 

 his face and the birds singing overhead. But pres- 

 ently he awakes with a "hello" and a "hurrah" 

 ringing in his ears. It is the Phillips children, and 

 they have come to otfer him their help to strip the 

 cane; they will help Irving and he will help them 

 back, and they fall to work with stout sticks, and 

 whack, wlmck go the sticks, and the talk and laugh- 

 ter come to me through the window, and Harry and 

 little Shane ai-e kept busy carrying water in the old 

 coffee-boilerthathasnolid, and I say, "Why, they are 

 having a perfect picnic— no work at all—" and the 

 cane is now finished, and away they go to the woods 

 to cut " stilts " to walk on, not a sleepy boy among 

 them. Now, is there some other lonely little boy 

 somewhere stripping cane all alone? and can't he 

 And some little neighbors to help him? 

 Vermont, 111. Mahala B. Chaddock. 



Mrs. C, you have hit the nail on the head 

 exactly. How shall we manage to get our 

 cliildren to enjoy work, rather than to con- 

 sider it drudgery V It makes a wonderful 

 deal of difference in this world, whether we 

 go about our daily tasks with energy and 

 zeal, or whether we take them up as hard- 

 ships, and do them complainiiigly. When I 

 was a boy I used to have to saw the wood 

 for my mother to bake and iron, and it used 

 to be a great hardship ; and well do I re- 

 member the hot summer day wlien I sat 

 down and meditated on the matter. I fell 

 to wondering why I could not study up some 

 plan by which the wood - sawing could be 

 made to seem as pleasant as building a pond 

 for my new saw-mill. I did it as follows : I 

 decided to build a monument — one that 

 should attract the attention of the passers- 

 by (if not the whole world at large), and the 

 monument was to be made entirely of fire- 

 wood. I pulled off my coat and went at it, 

 and before night it towered above the kitch- 

 en where stood mother's cook-stove. .Vfter 

 I got it built, of course I was obliged to keep 

 wood on hand, or my sisters would iiuU the 

 pile down to replenish the fire, and so the 

 Avoodpile ^ot all sawed up and split up, and 

 I had f im in doing it too. 



AUNT KATIE TALKS TO US ABOUT 

 CHEEEFULNESS. 



can our natural disposition be changed? 



EAR CHILDREN :-Have you heard it said, 

 that a cheerful spirit maketh the heart glad? 

 11^ Now, you and I know lots of boys and girls, 

 and the ones we like best are those who are 

 always cheerful and ready for fun. 

 "I don't go with Blanche any more, for she gets 

 mad so easy," was the remai-k made to me recently. 

 Now, that same Blanche is a bi'ight, smart girl, but 

 she has that fault of getting vexed at words and ac- 

 tions that were not intended to wound; but being 

 so self-conscious they are taken to heart; hence the 

 coldness of spirit manifested. 



Now, Jennie is another kind of a girl. If any 

 thing is said or done not just right, accoi'ding to her 

 idea of right, she looks grave, or may bo comical, 

 for a minute, and no further notice is taken of it, 

 and all goes merry again. One girl is just as smarit 

 and intelligent as the other, but how much more 

 comfoi-t the last one imparts than the first I , 



Now, boys and girls, I know that we can change 

 our natures very much if we try; and as we like 

 pleasant people, let us try to make ourselves so 

 that people will like us; for we in anger may think 

 that we don't care whether we are liked or not; yet 

 in our hearts we do care, and a cheerful spirit mak- 

 eth our hearts glad, and all those around us glad 

 too. Aunt Katie Hilton. . 



I A VISIT IN CALIFORNIA. 



SOMETHING ABOUT GRAPES. 



E went for a ride to a place six miles from 

 here one day last September, that I will tell 

 you about. I knew the people, but had 

 never been at their house; and when I got 

 there I was yeiy much interested. The 

 family are Spanish, real "high toned," as we say 

 here, for very nice people. The house was built of 

 adobe— that is, a kind of stiff earth that is made in- 

 to bricks about as large as eight common ones. 

 They are merely dried in the sun, and then laid up 

 with mud, and generally they are plastered up on 

 the outside with lime, to keep out the wet. Well, 

 this house was made in that way, and the walls were 

 three feet thick, and not more than ten feet high. 

 The windows and door-casings looked like a lot of 

 cupboards set around, and the windows were heaVily 

 grated with strong iron bars. ; . 



Mr. Estrada, the owner, said that when he built 

 the house he had to work with a musket by him, 

 and that for a number of years they were afraid of 

 their lives from the wild Indians; but after the 

 white men got to living here, the Indians were driven 

 off, or made to behave themselves. I am very glad 

 I did not live hei-e then, are not you? for I am afraid 

 of the wild Indians, and I should not have been 

 happy at all. Well, after times got more settled, 

 Mr. Estrada set out some fruit-trees and vines. 

 You will wonder where he got them. I did, so I 

 asked him, and he said that at all the Catholic mis- 

 sion buildings the priest had set out fruit. Some 

 had come from Spain and other countries ; and when 

 any one wanted cuttings or seeds, the padres, or 

 priests, had given them all they wanted. There was 

 not much left of those trees he had first set out, but 

 the grapevines were a sight to me. All around the 



