be laughed out of her purpose, and she began to climb
up the cliff. Slowly, inch by inch, she crawled up, so slowly that it
seemed as if she would take a thousand years to get there. But as she
passed crag after crag the animals below ceased making fun of her and
began to shout encouragement. At last she reached the top. And then the
Great Spirit turned her into a huge butterfly so strong that she flew
down, with the boys on her back, to safety.

There is a verse in the Old Testament which says that the race is not
always to the swift, which means that it is not always the strongest who
win. It is the one who keeps at it. Many a bright boy fails in school
because the lessons come so easily he does not work. Many a dull boy
wins because he sticks to it and plods away.

If you are tempted to trust too much to your brightness, remember the
animals who made fun of the inch-worm. If you are dull, remember the
inch-worm, take courage, and plod away. You will get there sometime.

THE FRENCH DRUMMER-BOY

I want to tell you to-day of one of the bravest deeds ever done by a
boy.

It happened this way. Back in the year 1793, when the French people were
having trouble with their king and queen, and finally put them to death,
the rulers called in soldiers from other nations to help them against
their own people. The foreign soldiers met the French troops before a
town called Maubeuge, and there a fierce battle was fought.

The fiercest part of the fighting was carried on against Hungarian
Grenadiers, who held the market-place of the town. During this charge a
drummer-boy in the French army saw that his countrymen were having a
hard time of it, so he slipped around back of these Hungarian soldiers
to the other side of the market-place, right in the thick of the enemy,
and there drummed the charge, in order to make his comrades think that
some of the French soldiers had already pushed through the enemy's
ranks, and so encourage the others to push on.

Many years after, in digging up the ground about the market-place, the
little bones of that drummer-boy were found buried alongside the bones
of the tall Hungarian men amongst whom he had fallen. The French people
have put up a statue to his memory in the town of Avesnes, and he is
shown still beating the charge on his drum, and looking out toward the
frontier whence the enemy of his people came.

A KING IN THE STUFF

In the early days of the history of the chil