ered a crime that would surely be punished by disaster and
shipwreck. Coleridge, the English poet, has written a wonderful poem on
this superstition, called the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," to which
Gustave Dore, a French artist, has drawn a series of illustrations
picturing the lonely frozen ocean, and the majestic, lordly albatross
which the unhappy sailor shot with his cross-bow, thereby bringing
misfortune and death on the goodly ship and its crew.

[Illustration: "KITTY, YOU CAN'T HAVE MY APPLE."--ENGRAVED FROM A
PICTURE BY F. DIELMAN, BY PERMISSION OF R. E. MOORE, AMERICAN ART
GALLERY, NEW YORK.]

A BEAR STORY.

BY EMILY H. LELAND.

A good many years ago, when the century was young, there came to live in
the big forests of Northern Vermont a man and his wife and their little
boy. Partly because they liked to be high up out of the fogs and damp,
and partly because there was little else but hilly land in that part of
the country, they built their cabin at the top of a nice baby mountain,
which was covered at the back with an immense orchard of maples and
butternuts, but which was quite bare and steep at the east side, and had
rocks cropping out which the farmer thought would be fine for building a
good stone house with some day.

It was long, hard work starting a farm in a place where there was
nothing but woods; but after a year or so had passed by, and enough
trees had been cleared away to make room for a corn field and a potato
patch, and a little chicken-house and cow-shed had been added to their
log-cabin, the young farmer used to sit down before their rough stone
fire-place, with its bright crackling fire, and trot his boy to sleep
upon his knee, while he watched the pretty young mamma putting away the
supper things, thinking all the time what a rich and happy man he was.
And when at last a pig-pen was joined to the cow-shed, and two cunning
little pink-nosed pigs had been bought of a neighbor five miles away,
and placed in it, he felt richer and grander than many a man does
nowadays who owns a railroad.

And how they grew, those pink-nosed pigs! They had a southern exposure,
good drainage, plenty of dry leaves and moss for bedding, and an
abundance of milk, with an occasional handful of cracked corn or a pint
of mashed potatoes. How could they help growing? The farmer took great
delight in feeding them, and his wife would sometimes ask him, with a
laugh, "Now, Stephen, which do you love