playing a practical joke on
him, for he must have seen how thoroughly scared he was when he burst
into the study. But the fact was that he had been looking out for an
opportunity of teaching Graham a lesson for some time, and when it came,
he made use of it without asking too many questions.

Anyhow, that was the last practical joke Graham ever played.

FAIRY PICTURES.

Day dawns cold: upon the pane
Artists are at work again,

Tracing ferns and fragile leaves,
Birds that nest beneath the eaves,

Tiny scenes of Fairy-land,
Just to help us understand

All about the fairy men,
Who in summer haunt our glen.

Every morn's a picture-book,
If you will but rise and look!

TELEGRAPH WIRES IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

The animal kingdom in British East Africa looks upon the two thousand
one hundred and ninety miles of telegraph wire, strung throughout that
region, as a novelty to be made use of. A number of creatures are trying
to adapt the wires to their own special purposes, and so the routine of
the telegraph business is more or less crowded with incidents of an
unusual character. The monkeys are simply incorrigible. Many of them
have been shot and thousands frightened; but they cannot get over the
idea that the wires are put there for them to swing upon. They have
ceased to pay much attention to the locomotive, and even the shrieks of
the whistle are not permitted to interfere much with their athletic
performances in mid-air.

Three wires are strung on the same line of poles for five hundred and
eighty-four miles between the Indian Ocean and Victoria Nyanza, where
the monkeys give very complicated performances. In one place they have
even succeeded in twisting the wires together.

The giraffe is also a source of annoyance. He sometimes applies
sufficient force to the bracket on which the wire is fastened to twist
it round, causing it to foul other wires. The hippopotamus is also a
nuisance, because he uses the poles for rubbing-posts and sometimes
knocks them over.

These creatures, however, do not steal the wire. When the copper wire
was stretched north-east from Victoria Nyanza, through the Usoga
country, the natives cut out considerable lengths of it, and at one time
about forty miles of wire were carried away and never recovered. Passing
caravans also found that they could help themselves along the way by
cutting the wire and using it in the barter trade. The temptation was
gr