of
jasper, which at first did not seem very well adapted to any purpose; and
yet, although mere fragments, they had every appearance of having been
purposely shaped, and not of accidental resemblances to a hook or sickle
blade. When I got home, I read that perfect specimens, mine being
certainly pieces of the same form, had been found away off in Norway; and
Professor Nilsson, who has carefully studied the whole subject, says they
are fish-hooks.

Instead of my broken ones, we have in the fourth illustration some
uninjured specimens of these fish-hooks from Norway. Two are made of
flint, the largest one being bone; and hooks of exactly the same patterns
really have been found within half a mile of the little valley I worked in
that afternoon.

The fish-hooks shown in our picture have been thought to be best adapted
for, and really used in, capturing cod-fish in salt water, and perch and
pike in inland lakes. The broken hooks I found were fully as large; and so
the little brook that now ripples down the valley, when a large stream,
must have had a good many big fishes in it, or the stone-age fishermen
would not have brought their fishing-hooks, and have lost them, along this
remnant of a larger stream.

But it must not be supposed that only children in this by-gone era, did
the fishing for their tribe. Just as the men captured the larger game, so
they took the bigger fishes; but it is scarcely probable that the boys who
waded the little brooks with bows and arrows would remain content with
that, and, long before they were men, doubtless they were adepts in
catching the more valuable fishes that abounded, in Indian times, in all
our rivers.

So, fishing, I think, was another way in which the stone-age children
played.

THE MAN WHO DIDN'T KNOW WHEN TO STOP.

BY M. M. D.

[Illustration]

A very fair singer was Mynheer Schwop,
Except that he never knew when to stop;
He would sing, and sing, and sing away,
And sing half the night and all of the day--
This "pretty bit" and that "sweet air,"
This "little thing from Tootovere."
Ah! it was fearful the number he knew,
And fearful his way of singing them through.
At first, the people would kindly say:
"Ah, sing it again, Mynheer, we pray"--
[This "pretty bit," or that "sweet air,"
This "little thing from Tootovere"].
They listened a while, but wearied soon,
And, like the professo