est record
for a month keeps the key the next month, and once a week opens the
box and distributes the contents. It is quite an honor to be
"postmistress," but no one can have it two months at a time. She
lets us make suggestions if we think of any improvements in the
school, and sometimes adopts them. Another of her plans is to allow
five minutes at the end of each hour when we may whisper, but not
talk out loud. If we wish to speak to any one we can leave our seat
and walk to them, if they are not near to us. But any one who
whispers, or communicates in any way at any other time, forfeits
this chance. I forgot to say that we put notes to each other in the
letter-box. We do like our little schoolma'am so much!--Yours
truly,

ALLIE BERTRAM.

AS IDLE AS A BIRD.

It is not so very long since I heard a little girl say that she "wished
she could only be as idle as a bird."

Now, this was not a very lazy sort of wish, if she had but known it.
There are very few little girls, or boys,--or grown-ups either, for the
matter of that,--who are as industrious as the birds. How many people
would be willing to begin their daily labors as early as the birds
begin theirs--at half-past three o'clock in the morning--and keep on
toiling away until after eight in the evening?

Think of it, my youngsters,--almost eighteen hours of constant work!

And the birds do it willingly, too; for it is a labor of love to bring
dainty bits to their hungry little ones and keep the home-nest snug and
warm.

One pair of birds that had been patiently watched from the first to the
last of their long, long day, made no less than four hundred and
seventy-five trips, of about one hundred and fifty yards each, in
search of food for their darling chicks!

As idle as a bird, indeed!--with all that hunting, and fetching, and
carrying, and feeding to do!

"OWN FIRST COUSINS."

Talking of birds, would you ever have thought it? The lovely and
brilliant Bird of Paradise, I'm told, is "own first cousin" to
the--Crows. And the Crows are not one bit ashamed to own the
relationship! Very condescending of them, isn't it?

ORANGE GROVES ON ST. JOHN'S RIVER.

Ocala, Marion County, Fla., 1877.

DEAR JACK: I was on the St. John's River at work with my father
about three years ago. There were real wild-orange groves there,
and the trees bore sour and bitter-sweet fruit. I will now tell y