On Top Of A Great Clock

ON THE TOP OF A GREAT CLOCK.

ULYSSES VISITS "BIG BEN."

"ULYSSES, you must climb Big Ben." Such was the brief but unmistakable message, boys, which I received from your discriminating editor a few days ago.

I confess it set me thinking--tingling. Often had I seen what is familiarly styled "Big Ben." In my nocturnal rambles along the river's banks in search of subjects for story and narrative, my eyes had frequently lifted themselves to its great moons of faces. Many a shudder, too, has passed over me as I contemplated the tremendous issues and awful consequences turning upon every movement of the slow yet fleeting hands of the great timepiece. I had watched its stern face at dead of night, at rise of sun, in broad day- light, and at setting sun; but then I was far off on terra firma below. The idea of climbing the mass of solid masonry--thirty-five feet square, of peering into the face of the giant measurer of Chronos, was a new sensation. What would the face say to me?


Winding

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Keeping Squirrels

THE SQUIRREL.

LIKE the white mouse, the squirrel can hardly be recommended on the score of usefulness. You could, for instance, scarcely expect it to guard the house as a dog would, or to catch beetles; and I don't think many people would be tempted to try squirrel pie. Putting utility on one side, however, it is impossible to have a more interesting, amusing, and handsome pet than Mr. Squirrel.

It would be sending coals to Newcastle to tell a country reader anything of the habits of the squirrel, much less how to catch him. Many a tall fir have I swarmed up to dislodge a little ball of red fur clinging to a slender, swaying branch, and then, when the branch has been reached and vigorously shaken, and Mr. Squirrel drops to the ground as light as a feather-- oh, the grief to see it slip through the too eager hands of my schoolfellows, and go scampering up another tree, taller and more inaccessible than the last!

Sometimes we were successful, however, and there was a triumphant march home, with the terrified animal struggling in a handkerchief. Our pets soon pined away and died. I suppose they found it impossible to delude themselves into believing that their new domicile--a soap-box--was as good as the boundless freedom of the forest.

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