not a fort." And
they did so.

Yes, it is much better to save than to destroy. Think of that, children,
and let it go with you through life. Be more earnest to save your friends
than to destroy your enemies. And yet, when a real enemy comes, and seeks
to do evil, be brave to resist him.

THE TWO COUSINS;
OR, HOW TO ACT WHEN "THINGS GO WRONG."

"There, mother, I knew it would be so. Lucy Wallace has just sent over to
tell me she can't walk out in the woods with me. There's no use in my
trying to please any body--there's no use in it. I'm an odd sort of a
creature, it seems. Nobody loves me. It always was so. Oh, dear! I wish I
knew what I had done to make the girls hate me so!"

This not very good-natured speech was made by a little girl, whom I shall
call Angeline Standish. She was some ten or twelve years old, as near as I
can recollect. Perhaps my readers would like to know something about the
occasion which called for this speech; but it is a long story, and hardly
worth telling. The truth is, when little boys and girls get very angry, or
peevish, or fretful, they sometimes blow out a great deal of ill-humor,
something after the manner that an overcharged steam boiler lets off
steam--with this difference, however, that the steam boiler gets cooler by
the operation, while the boy or girl gets more heated. The throat is a poor
safety-valve for ill-humor; and it is bad business, this setting the tongue
agoing at such a rate, whenever the mercury in one's temper begins to rise
toward the boiling point.

As is usual, in such cases, Angeline felt worse after these words had
whistled through the escape pipe of her ill-nature, than she did before;
and, for want of something else to do, she commenced crying. She was not
angry--that is, not altogether so--though the spirit she showed was a
pretty good imitation of anger, it must be confessed. She was peevish.
Matters had not gone right with her that day. She was crossed in this thing
and that thing. Her new hat had not come home from the milliner's, as she
expected; one of her frocks had just got badly torn; she had a hard lesson
to learn; and I cannot repeat the whole catalogue of her miseries. So she
fretted, and stormed, and cried, and felt just as badly as she chose.

Not long after the crying spell was over, and there was a little blue sky
in sight, Jeannette Forrest, a cousin of Angeline's, came running into the