I was a boy, I often used to go to a green-house where there were
a great many beautiful and rare plants; but I always thought that the
sensitive plant was the most wonderful thing in the whole
collection, and I did not know then how susceptible it was to the
influence of light. I was interested in it simply because it seemed to
have a sort of vegetable reason, and understood that it should shut up
its leaves whenever I touched it.

[Illustration: THE SENSITIVE PLANT.]

But there were things around me in the vegetable kingdom which were
still more wonderful than that, and I took no notice of them at all.

In the garden and around the house, growing everywhere, in the most
common and ordinary places, were vines of various kinds--I think there
were more morning-glories than anything else--and these exhibited a
great deal more sense, and a much nearer approach to reasoning powers,
than the sensitive plants, which were so carefully kept in the
green-house.

When one of these vines came up out of the earth, fresh from its seed,
the first thing it wanted, after its tendrils began to show
themselves, was something to climb up upon. It would like a good high
pole. Now, if there was such a pole within a few feet of the little
vine it would grow straight towards it, and climb up it!

It would not grow first in one direction, and then in another and then
in another, until it ran against something to climb on, but it would
go right straight towards the pole, as if it saw it, and knew it was a
good one for its purpose.

I think that there is not much in the vegetable kingdom more wonderful
than that.

SIR MARMADUKE.

[Illustration]

Sir Marmaduke was a good old English gentleman, all of the olden time.
There you see him, in his old-fashioned dining-room, with his
old-fashioned wife holding her old-fashioned distaff, while he is
surrounded by his old-fashioned arms, pets, and furniture.

On his hand he holds his hawk, and his dogs are enjoying the great
wood fire. His saddle is thrown on the floor; his hat and his pipes
lie near it; his sword and his cross-bows are stood up, or thrown
down, anywhere at all, and standing by his great chair is something
which looks like a coal-scuttle, but which is only a helmet.

Sir Marmaduke was certainly a fine old gentleman. In times of peace he
lived happily with his family, and was kind and generous to the poor
around him. In times of war he fought bravely for his country.