Page 238 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

And the: black snake glides and glitters and slides
Into a rift in a cottonwood tree;
And the buzzard sails on,
And conies and is gone,
Stately and still like a ship at sea.
And I wonder why I do not care
For Lhe dungs that are, like the things that were,
Docs half my heart lie buried there.
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande?
F r a n k D e s f k e /,,

THE TEA=KETTLE AND THE CRICKET.

[Read in fin animated, conversational style.]
I T appears as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, yo ^
must understand, between the kcttlo and the cricket. And this
is what led to it. and how it came about.
The kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow itself
to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating
itself kindlv to the knobs of coa;, it would loan forward with a drunken
i'
f
air, and dribble, a very idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It was quar­
relsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire.
To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Pecrybingle’s fingers, first of
all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserv­
ing of a better cause, dived sideways in— down to the very bottom of
the kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half
the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, whicli the lid of
that kettle employed against Mrs. Pccrybingle, before she got it up
again.
It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then, carrying its
ban die with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and mock­
ingly at Mrs, Peerybingle, as if it said, " 1 won’t boil. Nothing shall
induce me."
But Mrs, Peerybingle, with restored good humor, dusted her