ever seen a skunk. To those of the crew who were acquainted with the animal their experience was a source of much delight.

POLECAT GIVES CHILDREN HOLIDAY

WHEN a country school teacher, near Wichita, Kansas, arrived at school one January morning, she noticed a hole gnawed in the door. It was such a hole as a rat might have gnawed, only larger. Entering the school she saw something move under her desk. Believing it to be a rat, she called some of the boys to kill it.

The boys advanced cautiously. They saw a black bushy tail, and a white spot in the "rat's " fur. They knew it wasn't a rat. Being boys, they probably knew what was coming.

This particular creature does not give up the ghost without a struggle. But this skunk-and it was a full-grown one-didn't fight fair. He had recourse to something much akin to what in modern warfare is known as poisonous gas attacks. Finally, however, after some assaults and highly perfumed counter-assaults, he was subdued and stretched flat on his back. The boys were triumphant.

But the teacher concluded to give the children a day's vacation, and the schoolhouse an airing.

WHY THE DEAD CLOCK TICKED

A YOUNG man, out of curiosity, thought he would take the large family clock to pieces and put it together again. But he was unable to get all the parts back right again, and, using some of them for other purposes, closed the clock and set it back on the mantle again, a dead, non-timekeeping clock.

Some time after this one day, to his surprise, he heard this clock ticking. He asked other members of the family to come and listen to this dead clock ticking.

Upon opening it he discovered that a mouse, entering by a hole in the back, had made her nest in the clock, and was rearing a family of young mice there. The mother and her young had evidently been frisking about so in the clock that they had set the pendulum to swinging, and thus caused the clock to tick.

PLAYING WITH A SNAKE

THERE was a man living among the Florida lagoons who kept a pet rattlesnake in his hallway. He was a learned man, a literary man in a small way, and he had long lived in that hot, sand-strewn land. So had the serpent. In fact, they had lived together, the man in the house

and the reptile in the cage, for nearly twenty years.

This man was a tease, and the snake had an irritable temper. Every morning his master, just as he came down to breakfast, would stop and stick a finger into the cage to see the hissing, wrathful creature leap at it.

For twenty years he kept up the foolish habit. His friends warned him; his wife pleaded with him; not a few scientists who visited him remonstrated. Still every morning he thrust the finger in, and every morning the snake sprang in vain, until one day the poisoned fangs clipped his finger. That evening the man died.

This story illustrates the danger of trifling with vice and sin. The young and inexperienced may say to themselves: "I'll never be overcome. I will never go so far that I cannot retrace my steps. I can dabble and tipple and go near the brink, and not go over." But take this course, instead of the safe path, and some morning you will wake up and find, as this man did, that the fangs have driven home.

IN THE COILS OF A SNAKE

A PYTHON is a very large snake. Men sometimes tame these snakes and perform with them.

The danger from handling them is not from being bitten, but from having them coil about one's body and being squeezed to death.

Once a snake-trainer, while attempting to forcibly feed a large tame python, found his limbs and body suddenly wound tightly about by the coils of this powerful serpent. He could not move, but he immediately called to several men standing by for help. With great effort they succeeded in uncoiling the monster and setting the man free. From that day on he could never be induced to have anything more to do with snakes.

THE SELFISH GOLDFISH

A FAMILY had two beautiful goldfish which they kept in a large glass globe filled with water. In this globe, besides water, there were pebbles, shells, white sand, a pretty ornamental castle, and sea-moss-everything, in fact, to make the fish contented and happy; and besides, fresh water was given them frequently, and they were fed nice white fish-food daily.

But one fish was a little older and a little larger than the other, and every time they were fed their fish-food, and the smaller fish began to help himself to some of it, the larger fish would chase him round and round the globe, back and forth,

in a leisurely but tantalizing manner. He did not bite him, but simply chased, worried, and annoyed him. He was so greedy and so selfish that he wanted all the fish-food himself, and was unwilling that his companion should have any.

Thus they lived together for a long time. But one night the smaller fish, it seems, concluded he would escape from his tormentor, and with a heroic spring, jumped out over the top of the globe and fell on the floor, where he was found dead the next morning. Thus he came to an unnatural and untimely end.

His death, we know you will agree, was due to the selfish disposition and the unkind treatment of his older and ungenerous brother. Like many people in this world, this older brother did not love his neighbor as himself. Though a goldfish, he did not live up to the Golden Rule.

RIGHTS OF ANIMALS

Like men, all animals have rights. No one has a right to torture any living creature. During the Dark Ages some men thought they had a right to torture those who did not think and believe as they did. And not so long ago some men thought that because they owned an animal, they had a right to treat it as they chose.

But we have finally come to learn that all living creatures have rights.

Some years ago a man living in Washington, D. C., was prosecuted by the Humane Society because he poured kerosene over some rats he had caught in a trap and then set fire to them-a heartless and fiendish act.

Vermin and pests we may rightfully destroy; but we have no right to torture, abuse, or give needless pain to any living creature.