nches and filled them with water; they ran
wildly about in the fields, killing what they could. But while they
fought in one place new armies of crickets marched down the
mountain-sides and attacked the fields in other places. And at last the
people fell on their knees and wept and cried in despair, for they saw
starvation and death in the fields.

A few knelt to pray. Others gathered round and joined them, weeping.
More left their useless struggles and knelt beside their neighbors. At
last nearly all the people were kneeling on the desolate fields praying
for deliverance from the plague of crickets.

Suddenly, from far off in the air toward the great salt lake, there was
the sound of flapping wings. It grew louder. Some of the people
looked up, startled. They saw, like a white cloud rising from the
lake, a flock of sea gulls flying toward them. Snow-white in the sun,
with great wings beating and soaring, in hundreds and hundreds, they
rose and circled and came on.

"The gulls! the gulls!" was the cry. "What does it mean?"

The gulls flew overhead, with a shrill chorus of whimpering cries, and
then, in a marvelous white cloud of spread wings and hovering breasts,
they settled down over the seeded ground.

"Oh! woe! woe!" cried the people. "The gulls are eating what the
crickets have left! they will strip root and branch!"

But all at once, some one called out,--

"No, no! See! they are eating the crickets! They are eating only the
crickets!"

It was true. The gulls devoured the crickets in dozens, in hundreds,
in swarms. They ate until they were gorged, and then they flew heavily
back to the lake, only to come again with new appetite. And when at
last they finished, they had stripped the fields of the cricket army;
and the people were saved.

To this day, in the beautiful city of Salt Lake, which grew out of that
pioneer village, the little children are taught to love the sea gulls.
And when they learn drawing and weaving in the schools, their first
design is often a picture of a cricket and a gull.

THE NIGHTINGALE[1]

[1] Adapted from Hans Christian Andersen.

A long, long time ago, as long ago as when there were fairies, there
lived an emperor in China, who had a most beautiful palace, all made of
crystal. Outside the palace was the loveliest garden in the whole
world, and farther away was a forest where the trees were taller than
any other trees in the world, and farther away, still,