know of your distress, I should indeed be ungrateful, did I not render you all the help in my power. I shall immediately place your name on the pension list for the yearly sum of two thousand florins, and trust that you may live many years to enjoy it. 666 'Joseph II.'" The widow and her children were taken under the especial care of the emperor, and a brilliant career was opened up for the boys, who had inherited all their father's bravery as well as their mother's gentle nature. Directions for Reading.-Mark the inflection of the following questions. Where do you live? Is your name Harry or John? Why are you begging? Do you wish to walk? In such a question as the last one, if emphasis be given in turn to the words you, wish, walk, the answer might still be yes or no; and yet the meaning of the answer would be different in each case. Do you wish to walk? Yes, I do. Do you wish to walk? No, I do not wish to walk; but sup pose I must. Do you wish to walk? No, I would rather ride. Language Lesson.-Let pupils write a letter to some friend using the last paragraph of the lesson as a subject. "O mother! What do they mean by blue? The mother's eyes filled up with tears; And smoothed away from the sunny brow 66 Why, mother's eyes are blue, my sweet, And the love we bear our darling child Grows stronger every day." "But what did they mean?" persisted the child; "For I saw two cripples to-day, And one of them said he fought for the blue, The other, he fought for the gray. "Now he of the blue had lost a leg, And the other had but one arm, And both seemed worn and weary and sad, They told of the battles in days gone by, Till it made my young blood thrill; The leg was lost in the Wilderness fight, 66 And the arm on Malvern Hill. "They sat on the stone by the farmyard gate, And talked for an hour or more, Till their eyes grew bright and their hearts seemed warm With fighting their battles o'er; And they parted at last with a friendly grasp, In a kindly, brotherly way, Each calling on God to speed the time Then the mother thought of other days Two stalwart boys from her riven; How they knelt at her side and lispingly prayed, "Our Father which art in heaven;" How one wore the gray and the other the blue; How they passed away from sight, And had gone to the land where gray and blue Are merged in colors of light. And she answered her darling with golden hair, With the thoughts awakened in that sad hour "The blue and the gray are the colors of God, And many a noble, gallant soul Has found them a passport to heaven." In the summer of 1862, while we were living in the State of Minnesota, I had an experience which I regard as one of the most remarkable that I ever met with. We lived at Lac Qui Parle, or rather quite close to it, for we were about a mile from the place. There were only three of us—father, mother, and myself. We had moved to Minnesota three years before, the main object of my parents being to restore their health; for they were feeble and needed a change of climate. The first year, both father and mother were much benefited; but not long after, father began to fail. I remember that he used to take his chair out in front of the house in pleasant weather and sit there, with his eyes turned toward the blue horizon, or into the depths of the vast wilderness which was not more than a stone's throw from our door. Mother would sometimes go out and sit beside father, and they would talk long and earnestly in low tones. I was too young to understand all this at the time, but it was not long afterward that I learned the truth. Father was steadily and surely declining in health; but mother had become strong and robust, and her disease seemed to have left her altogether. She tried to encourage father, and really believed his weakness was only temporary. Scarcely a day passed that I did not see some of the Sioux Indians who were scattered through that portion of the State. In going to, and coming from the agency, they would sometimes stop at our house. Father was very quick in picking up languages, and he was able to converse quite easily with the red men. How I used to laugh to hear them talk in their odd language, which sounded to |