r teacher wrote their "excuses"--one to be carried by each
boy when he went home from school an hour late.

When the joyous hour was over, Mr. Newman rang the bell and the boys
came up to the schoolhouse and were given their excuses. They thought it
very funny to be kept "out" an hour after school, instead of being kept
"in," and to carry an excuse home instead of to school.

"We will have poor lessons every day, if you will punish us this way,
Mr. Newman," said one of the biggest boys.

"This kind of punishment is given only when a six-inch snow covers the
school yard at Hamlet," said the teacher.

The boys all went happily home with cold noses and fingers and toes, but
warm hearts for their teacher, whom they were beginning to think was the
greatest man they knew.

"I tell you I'm going to be up on that geography and grammar to-morrow,"
said Fred Walton.

"And I'm going to know how to do those examples to-morrow," said Leonard
King.

And the next day the boys all had extra good lessons, if the school yard
was covered with trampled snow and the battered snow fort still under
the trees.

ELSIE'S ADVICE.

"Now, Maud Anna Belinda," said Elsie, "I want you to sit up straight and
listen to me. I have something to say to you; something you should be
glad to hear."

It was hardly worth while to ask Maud Anna Belinda to sit up straight,
for she was already straight, indeed, with her hands hanging down
stiffly at her sides, and her eyes right out in front of her.

"I have some good advice to give you," Elsie went on, "for your manners.
There's company manners and there's home-folks manners. Some people have
very fine company manners, but their home-folks manners are horrid. They
make all their smiles in company, and just have frowns and pouts and
frets for the family; which of course, you know, is very unfair and not
nice at all. Some people don't divide theirs up; they have manners that
are just the same all the time. And this is a much better way,
especially if they are a pleasant kind, my dear.

"Some people get their manners at Paris, and some people's mothers tell
them to them when they are young. But my dear Maud Anna Belinda, if you
want yours to be good and lovely through and through, you must have a
good and lovely heart that's full of kindness and best wishes to
everybody. Those are the sort they have in heaven, and heaven's a better
place to get them from than Paris, I guess.

"So now I'm don