66

"O that's it!" said the giant. 'Well, then, you stand there."

So he unwound a bit of the web from his fingers-just enough so that he could hold the Procrastinator's Primer-and stood him at the end of a long row of children, who were saying over and over again, just as fast as they could speak, "Going to, going to, going to, going to," just that, and nothing else in the world.

Johnny was tired and hungry by this time, and longed to see his mamma, thinking that, if he could only get back to her, he would always mind the very moment she told him to do any thing.

He made a great many good resolutions while he stood there. At last the giant called him to come and say his lesson.

"You shall have a short one to-day," said he, "and need say it only a thousand times, because it is your first day here. To-morrow, you must say it a million."

Johnny tried to step forward, but the web was still about his feet, so he fell with a bang to the floor.

Just then he opened his eyes to find that

he had rolled from the rock to the grass, and that mamma was calling him in a loud voice to come to supper, and this time he didn't say, "I'm going to."

Directions for Reading.-The words in quotation marks should be read in the same manner as in Lesson I.

Read words in dark type in the following sentences with more force than the other words:

66 Has he come? Did you get him?"

Words that are read more forcibly than other words in a sentence are called emphatic words.

Which are the emphatic words in the following sentences? "You shall have a short one to-day."

"I must know exactly."

Language Lesson.-Divide into syllables, accent, and mark the sounds of the letters in the following words: extra, primer, moment, coal-black.

"I think I ought to be doing something

in the world!" said a little voice out in

the garden.

"Pray, what can you do?" asked another and somewhat stronger voice.

"I think I can grow," answered the little voice.

If you had seen the owner of the little voice, perhaps you would not have thought him any thing remarkable.

It is true he had on a clean white coat, so smooth and shining that it looked as if it had been newly starched and ironed, and inside of this, he hugged two stout packages.

The coat had only one fastening; but that fastening extended down the back, and was a curious thing to see.

It looked just as if the coat had been cut with a knife, and had afterward grown together again. It was like a scar on your hand; and a scar it is called.

'Yes, I ought to be growing," said the · little voice, "for I am a bean, and in the spring a bean ought to grow."

Now you know how the coat came by its scar, for the scar was the spot which showed where the bean had been broken from the pod.

"What do you mean by growing?" said

the other voice, which came from a large red stone.

"Why," said the bean, "don't you know what growing means? I thought every thing knew how to grow. You see, when I grow, my root goes down into the soil to get moisture, and my stem goes up into the light to find heat. Heat and moisture

are my food and drink.

66

"By and by, I shall be a be a full-grown plant, and that is wonderful! In the ground, my roots will travel far and wide.

In the air, how happy my stem will be! I shall learn a great deal, and see beautiful things every day. O how I long for that time to come!"

"What you say is very strange," said the red stone. "Here I have been in this same place for many years, and I have not grown at all. I have no root; I have no stem; or, if I have, they never move upward nor downward, as you say. Are you sure you are not mistaken ?"

"Why, of course I'm not mistaken," cried the bean. "I feel within myself that I can grow and I have absorbed so much moisture that I must soon begin.”

Just then the bean's coat split from end to end, and for one or two minutes neither the stone nor the bean spoke. The stone was astonished, and the bean was a little frightened. However, he soon recovered his courage.

"There!" said he, showing the two packages he had been carrying; "these are my seed-leaves. In them is the food on which I intend to live when I begin growing.

"When my stem is strong enough to do without them, they will wither away. My coat is all worn out, too. I shall not need it any longer. Look inside the seed-leaves, and you will see the germ. Part of it is root, and part of it is stem. Do you see?"

"I see two little white lumps," replied the stone; "but I can not understand how they will ever be a root and a stem."

"I do believe you are a poor, dull mineral, after all," said the bean; "and if so, of course you can not understand what pleasure a vegetable has in growing.

"I wouldn't be a mineral for the world! I would not lie still and do nothing, year after year. I would rather spread my