hey are eating any of the nuts they
stored away last summer.

FREDDIE'S PAPA.

WHAT A LITTLE BOY IN ENGLAND SAYS.

MY grandfather and grandmother live in the country. Everybody in their
house is very fond of birds, and very thoughtful for the comfort of all
dumb creatures.

Among the birds that flock about grandfather's house are the bright
little tom-tits. They fly very quickly, and look very pretty, darting in
and out of a tall evergreen-tree that grows in front of the dining-room
window.

[Illustration]

In winter, my Aunt Emily has a pole, about four feet high, stuck in the
ground near this tree. Across the top of the pole, a light bamboo stick
is fastened, not quite as long as the pole is high. On strings tied at
the ends of the bamboo stick, netted bags, filled with fat or suet, are
hung.

Now, tom-tits are, I think, the only birds in England that can cling to
a thing with their heads hanging down; and they are very fond of fat. So
they come to aunty's bags, cling to them as they sway to and fro in the
wind, and eat to their little hearts' content. We watch them from the
windows, and see what is going on.

Sometimes other birds try very hard to get a share of the feast,
particularly when the weather is very cold, and they cannot find much
else. Then they will stand on the ground, looking at the bags, and now
and then make an awkward spring at them, sometimes snatching a piece of
suet, but generally failing to reach it.

A tiny robin (an English robin is not at all like an American one) has
practised so much, this cold weather, that he can not only get a taste
of the suet by darting at it, but, better still, will sit on the top of
the bag, and get at it in that way. But he seems very much afraid of
falling off, and I think the tom-tits would laugh at him: perhaps they
do, in bird fashion.

When they cling, they do not mind where it is, and often seem to take
the very bottom of the bag by choice, and hang there, with their heads
down, so long, that it seems as though they would surely get the
headache.

I have often seen two, and sometimes three birds on a bag at a time.

H. B.
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND.

[Illustration: OFF IN A HURRY.]

THE FROGGIES' PARTY.

THE frog who would a-wooing go
Gave a party, you must know;
And his bride, dressed all in gre