ter are more common, and have to produce apples, while the
ice-flowers are uncommon, and of no possible use.

That is the difference between them.

ABOUT GLASS.

Glass is so common and so cheap that we never think of being grateful
for it. But if we had lived a few centuries ago, when the richest
people had only wooden shutters to their windows, which, of course,
had to be closed whenever it was cold or stormy, making the house as
dark as night, and had then been placed in a house lighted by glass
windows, we would scarcely have found words to express our
thankfulness. It would have been like taking a man out of a dreary
prison and setting him in the bright world of God's blessed sunshine.
After a time men made small windows of stones that were partly
transparent; and then they used skins prepared something like
parchment, and finally they used sashes similar to ours, but in them
they put oiled paper. And when at last glass came into use, it was so
costly that very few were able to buy it, and they had it taken out of
the windows and stored carefully away when they went on a journey, as
people now store away pictures and silver-plate.

Now, when a boy wants a clear, white glass vial for any purpose, he
can buy it for five cents; and for a few pennies a little girl can buy
a large box of colored beads that will make her a necklace to go
several times around her neck, and bracelets besides. These her elder
sister regards with contempt; but there was a time when queens were
proud to wear such. The oldest article of glass manufacture in
existence is a bead. It has an inscription on it, but the writing,
instead of being in letters, is in tiny little pictures.

Here you see the bead, and the funny little pictures on it. The
pictures mean this: "The good Queen Ramaka, the loved of Athor,
protectress of Thebes." This Queen Ramaka was the wife of a king who
reigned in Thebes more than three thousand years ago, which is
certainly a very long time for a little glass bead to remain unbroken!
The great city of Thebes, where it was made, has been in ruins for
hundreds of years. No doubt this bead was part of a necklace that
Queen Ramaka wore, and esteemed as highly as ladies now value their
rubies. It was found in the ruins of Thebes by an Englishman.

[Illustration]

It may be thought that this bead contradicts what has been said about
there being a time when glass was unknown, and that time only a few
centuries ago