is a bitter cold night, and the wind comes
howling down the street as if it would like to bite off everybody's
ears and noses. It shakes the leafless branches of the trees until
they all seem to be moaning and groaning together. The moon is just
rising over the church, and the coachman is standing right in a broad
patch of its light. But moonlight, though very beautiful when you are
where you can comfortably admire it, never warmed anybody yet. And so
the poor coachman gets no good out of that.

There is a party in the great house. The boy is standing where he can
only see the lower steps and the tall lamps, but the coachman can see
that it is lighted from garret to cellar. He knows that it is warm as
summer in there. There are stands of flowers all the way up the
stairways, baskets of them are swinging from the ceilings, and vines
are trailing over the walls.

Who in there could ever guess how bleak and cold it is outside! Ladies
in shimmering silks and satins, and glittering with jewels, are
flitting about the halls, and floating up and down the rooms in
graceful dances, to the sound of music that only comes out to the
coachman in fitful bursts.

He has amused himself watching all this during part of the evening,
but now he is looking in at the side-light of the door to see if there
are any signs of the breaking up of the party, or if those he is to
take home are ready to go away. He is getting very impatient, and let
us hope they will soon come out and relieve him.

GEYSERS, AND HOW THEY WORK.

[Illustration: THE GRAND GEYSER OF ICELAND.]

Geysers, or fountains of hot water or mud, are found in several parts
of the world. Iceland possesses the grandest one, but in California
there are a great many of these natural hot fountains, most of which
throw forth mud as well as water. Some of the American Geysers are
terrible things to behold. They are generally found near each other,
in particular localities, and any one wandering about among them sees
in one place a great pool full of black bubbling contents, so hot that
an egg thrown in the spring will be boiled in a minute or two; there
he sees another spring throwing up boiling mud a few feet in the air;
there another one, quiet now, but which may at any time burst out and
send its hot contents high above the heads of the spectators; here a
great hole in the ground, out of which constantly issues a column of
steam, and everywhere are cracks and crevices i