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' Birthdays. The most pernickety, absurd Young persons ' the moon * Were born upon the thirty-third Of April, May or June. And children's recko' Seven times as stiff ae starch Whose birthdays come the thirty- second Of August or of March. Of all the luckless and forlorn Young. ne'er-do-welle the worst Had the bad judgment to be born November thirty-first. Now be oh igs face and shine your And aes as you are bid You were a lucky child to choose Your birthday when you did! The Happiness Key. - One day when Mary Lou was going on an errand Mery saw something ehin- ing bright and yellow in the little path in front of her. She pounced on it and picked it up. "Some°kind of|; "A funny kind!" The little key was of brass. Its handle was in the form of two fat i i them, and its stem was holloy. The key ended in a queer little square " Mary Lou took it home and showed #t to her mother. "T never saw a key just like that," her mother said. "What can it be- Jong to? Perhaps some one will ad- vertise.in the paper for it." But though Mary Lou read the Lost and Found column for a month, she "could not find anyone who had lost a little key with cupids at one end aml a square at the other. At last She pretended that it was the key to an enchanted garden, fo a magic room, to a prin- cess's trunk that had gone astray, to a king's castie--to all sorts of things. She tried it in every keyhole she could find--in the keyhole of the piano, of the sewing machine, of the linen closet, of the cedar chest and of many other things. "Never mind," she said at last. "It's hapnin ¥;anyway, It's bound! And to belong somewhere, and one of these/. days it's going to unlock something. beautiful." "Mary Lou," said her mother one day, "I'm going to take you to call on some people who moved into town only a few weeks ago. 'here is al little lame boy in the family. He may get well after a while, but just now he cannot walk ai all and is very rest- less and unhappy, they say. You must do what you can, Mary Lou, to cheer} him up." "I will," Mary Lou promised gladly. "Indeed I will!" She did her best, but the little boy, whose name was Horace, was hard to umuse. He sat by a window with his books and playthings round him, but he oe tired of them all. manners may be! * §| The cylinder began to an instant later, a clear,: eet cixline a The little music rigid | th he added, "there is really no use in trying." ~ Mary Lou slipped out of her chair at once and began to experiment, She in the door, but there it went in too far. It slipped into the keyholé as far as the fat cupids. She even tried it very carefully on the eight-day clock. Horace watched her solemnly. "It won't work, you see," he said at.last as he took the key and turned it over in his fingers. "It'won't work at all." Mary Lou could not help feeling disappointed in the happiness key. i was not making the boy happy, | 'was certain. Well, perhaps she one expecting too much from a stray key that she had picked up in a path. Presently her eye fell on a-box that was pushed back under some papers on a shelf. "What's that?" Mary Lou asked suddeniy. "What's sania the boy said in a listless ton "That box," said Mary Lou, point- ing. "T suppose it's a music box," ace said. "I had forgotten all ehout it. A lady near town sent it to me when she heard I was lame. _ But it won't play." "Why won't it play?" asked Mary Lou eagerly. "Because there's nothing to start it with. And now the lady's moved away, and we can't find out about it. Something is lost or missing." Mary Lou turned the box round and round. "It must play," she said. "It Oh, if it must make music for us. only would!" Then she saw suddenly a smal! hole at one side of the box. She looked at it closer. "Give me the happiness key!" she saftl. Horace handed it to her with a look of surprise, and she reached forward and thrust it hurriedly into the little square hole. "It fits!" she cried. Horace sat up straight in his chair. "Turn it!" he cried. And Mary Lou turned and turned and turned. She grew quite red in the face; her heart beat fast. Then all at once she had her reward. »tarn was playi It plage. and played. At first the music went-as clear and tinkling as water over stones; then it sounded like sheep bells in a pasture; then it swelled and deepened into a real tune, a lovely, rollicking, frolicking tune that went on and on and on, more beautiful with every note. orace, whose cheeks were now glowing with pleasure, beat time on e arm of his chair, and his guest caught hold of her skirts and danced. Mary Lou made funny rag dolls out} of her handkerchief, and he did laugh | She felt that | she could not sit there and see him! staring so wistfully at the boys who | were playing ball in the back lot. | Then all at once an idea came to her. She tugged at a yellow ribbon | round her neck. "Did you ever see a happiness key?" she asked. Horace turned his sad eyes away | from the window. "A what kind of ked. she answered, Then her fancies about the she told him al! key. But the boy was too tired to play make-believe. "Perhaps it will unlock something real," he said. "You might try the locks i in this room. Though, of course," The poultry-farmer who has to be content with the annual production of |a couple of hundred eggs from each hen would like to learn the fish's see- ret of producing eggs so prolifically. The cod tops the list with nine mil- lion annually, then comes the sturgeon with seven and a half million. An- other great producer is the flounder which just touches the million. The mackerel deposits half a mil- lion eggs, the perch four hundred thousand, while the humble herring Is content with a paltry ten thousand. Eggs are generally deposited in sand or gravel, though fish which live on the bed of the ocean attach their eges to seaweed. Fish are almost en- tirely carnivorous, and have no com- punction whatever in swallowing theid own young. It is by smel! rather than by sight that they obtain their food. Publishers' How mang copies of Conan Doyle's | romance, "A Study in Scarlet," in! which Sherlock Holmes first made his | bow to the public, have been sold, i a secret of the publishers. It must be enormous. But the famous author got ; only $125 for all rights, and has never | had any more since. He was writing for ten yé&ars before he made more! than $250 a year by his pen. Anthony Trollope's novels still sell well, although he has been dead near- | ly forty years, yet one of the best of them, "The Warden," was ten years selling 750 copies, and in the first year he drew- $45 for it. He had then beer writing for ten years practically for nothing. The nightly crowds that flock to see Maeterlinck's play, "The Betrothal," and thousands who enjoyed his "Blue Bird," will be filled with wonder at the statement that his first play was printed with his own hands, had a complete edition of twenty-five copies, and that he gave them all away. Prob- ably those privately-printed copies are worth much more than their weight Ip gold totay. 'Bargains - Jack a sold his story, "The Biack Cat,' r $40, yet the time came when he soeid not consider an o¥der from an editor for the shortest of ; Short stories for less than $750. A short time since, five unpublished | poems on scraps of paper, in the hand- | writing of Emily Bronte, sold at aue:| y tion for $150, yet when Charlotte and | Emily committed the rash act of pub- lishing a little volume of their verses, | the publishers disposed of two copies! The rest of the edition was distributed | gratis, or sold for wastepaper! It is laughable, yet pathetic, to think | { that Milton got altogether about $300 | for "Paradise Lost;:" that Goldsmith ; got the same sum for "The Vicar of! ;@pproach of rain or stormy weather, or fly over the land. Wakefield;" that Edgar Allan Poe got | $10 for "The Raven""--alt great master. | pieces of their kind--whilst Her and the royalties of such songs as "The Man That Broke the | Bank at Monte Carlo" and "Ta-ra-ra- boom-de-ay"" ran into tens of thous- ands of dollars. "I knew it was a happiness key!" Dark, gloomy, blue skies foretell Mary Lou. " --_ "haa ay Os I knew it all the A light blue sky indicates fair. weath- -- er still to come. Cirrus clouds with feathery tips 9,000,000 Eggs a Year! turned up indicate rain; with feathery ; and remain over the sea Lill the storm to rain, because moljst air is charged uicecoworbay. IS NOT, __ AN EXACT SCIENCE Proverbs, Superstitions and Signs Here Given for They May be Worth. nn fon- Forecasting the weather is onc: tee ture of meteorology. which requires | » long study, preseverance and years of practical experience. For these rea sons there are few men who- ever at- tain anywhere near satisfactory work --never perfection. .Meteorology is not an absolute science, and never can be. In fact, there has been no actual improvement in forecasting the weath- er in the last twenty-five years. There are always so many elements of doubt that a man to grasp the situa- tion of the daily changes and combina- t} tions must really be imbued with intul- tion to be successful. It is one of the most interesting sub- jects in the range of literature and rshould receive the attention it de serves by men qualified by experience. There are a few rules that may serve to make clear the movements of general storms and may be found valu- able. The general movement of storms in Canada is from west to east; they are termed areas of low pressure, or cyc- lonic storms, and areas of high pres- sure anti-cyclonic' storms, although the wind force of an anti-cyclonic storm is in many cases of greater velocity than the cyclonic. Cyclones travel at from twenty miles to one hundred miles an hour, but the rotary motion may reach one hundred to two} 'hundred miles an hour. The winds always blow toward the cyclone centre, and the storm area is attended by warmer weather and rain or snow, according to the season. The anti-cyclone, which follows the cyc- lone, is an area of high pressure, with the winds blowing out from the centre and is attended by clearing or clear weather and colder; in winter by a cold wave. "% On the approach of a storm thé winds blow from an easterly direction, as the storm centre passes a point -to the north of you the winds shift by the south to the west and northwest. If the storm's centre passes south o: you the wind backs to the north, then northwest. Watch the Clouds. Clouds are among the most reliable , listles ' sign of rain; damp air makes them Bible T About Education and drowsy.. S$. . Magpies flying in flocks and uttering} areh cries foretell windy weather. Before rain fowl of all kinds make "Read Deut. oe 4-9; Prov. 3: "18-18; of prey unusual. noises, *| St. Lake 2: 5 Before rain horses neigh, cattle low,|. Christ in "si temple,-when He was asses bray and sheep bleat, because | twelve years old, hearing the rabbis dampness relaxes their nerves and|and asking questions, had al- they feel restless. -waye been an attraction to eieeney WEE Whale Kid Gloves. Soft, pHable, "kid," that i#-as strong and durable as its genuine prototype, from' the intestines of the whale; thick sole leather of evectiqn+ sriatts. trom the lining of the whale's mouth; five or more huge split sides of tough leather from the skin of the beluga, the common dolphin.of the North Pa- cifle; these are only a few of the many revolutionary products obtained from aquatic leather, the manufacture of which has become one of the new im- portant industries of the pactse Northwest. From an embryonic idea three years ago to a practical method of utilizing annually millions of dollars' Worth of otherwise wasted by-pro- ducts and supplying a new source of sorely needed material, the advance- ment of the industry has Pay phen- omenal. The latest Sabstipinaits 5 is the utill- zation, of the skins of sea lions an seals and the intestines and mouth skin of the whale: The intestines of a sixty-foot whale measure sixty to seventy-five feet in length, and about six inches in diameter, or when open- ed and spread out flat, about eighteen inches wide. A satisfactory process has been found to tan this material, producing a fine substitute for kid. The lining or wall of: the whale's .Stomach, in some species a huge sack several feet in diameter, is converted into a leather, which in thickness, tex- ture and strength resembles the Al- pine chamois or kid, but is superior to Fit in being of uniform strength throughout. The machine which splits this has ten-foot rolls and works with remarkable precision. The inside of the whale's mouth fur nishes a skin which is tanned-tind fin- ished into a material that resembles a side of sole leather from a bull's hide, differing only in a "rib" which runs through it at intefvals of a half inch. This makes an artisic and vir- tually indestructible bag leather. The beluga measures eighteen to twenty-five feet in length and weighs around 1000 pounds. Its hide can be split five or six times, each resulting layer the thickness of calfskin, with the added advantage that all parts of every split are strong and pliable, and capable of being worked up and util- ized in virtually every manner-- that pron can. of natural phenomena to be a Soa in forecasting the weather... cloud Signs are here given: A mottled. sky at any season of the forming a mackerel sky foretell rain and sometimes a eavy storm of wind or rai Streamers of clouds, resemblipg mares tails, stretching from the hori- zon to the zenith, indicate wind. A gray he low overcast sky with and norther- ly wind ral met snow in peaciona and winte A gray sky in the morning mises fair weather. pro- tips turned down, fair weather. Small inky fooking clouds rain. Fog forming ta the ee is an infallible sign of a fair da { fog sets in during the night mid¢ty or rainy day may be expected. When smaller clouds melt into one another fair weather will continue. Dew or frost never occurs on a windy night. | Dew forms heaviest after a hot day. | Some Age-Old Proverbs. Following are some proverbs, giv ven | for what they are worth, because the | traditions and superstitions of the an- | | tiques are still interesting: | Old mythology is called upon to em-} phasize the proverb that "dolphins or porpoises around a ship is a sign of rain. The appearance of sea mew indication of rain. Geese rubbing down and srenatea| their feathers is a good sign of fair | weather. If the geese keep away from | e water, look out for a good old-; fashioned storm. When geese feed and finally go the water the weather will be clear. The frightened cry of geese means rain coming. Roosters are said to clap their wings in an unusual manner before rain, and hens rub in the dust and seem very | uneasy. Cats with their tails up and hair ap- parently electrified indicate approach- foretell a is =n i is | ing wind. ager remain in their hives preced- ing r Nexhaws fly low before approagh- ing rain. Seagulls fly about the sea when the weather is fair and disappear on the Petrels fly to the sea before a storm Cats rub their eyes when it is likely with electricity, itching sensation. When sheep lie around and are un- willing to go to pasture it is a good which produces an es ih rh Pe sand, or: giant) as "ee ieatear and fall a5 of this tough product: makes it prized for upholstering, bag and trunk covering, etc. The skin of the average deep-sea shark, which -is ten to. twelve feet in length, measures about thirty-five square feet. This i split as many as eight times. . ------_ 4 -- Yarn Spinners. And the old seafaring men Came to me now and then With their sagas of the seas. One of the Trans-Atlantic steamship lines offers a new opening for the re- tired ancient mariners sych as we sometimes find in the lee of the stove n wintertide at a sailors' mission. Whether "every man has a book in him" or not, every old salt is supposed to be able to spin a yarn' such as froze the blood of Desdemona when thello described what he had been throngh. It is now proposed that the patriarch sailors, instead of spending their time spell-binding one another, shall turn their narrative talents to the enter- tainment of ocean voyagers with noth- ing to do but watch the rail dipping and rising against the restless blue- black waves. The old tars are to spend their time mostly in tke nursery and on the play deck among the children. 'Tis a pret- | ty picture that is offered to the imagt- nation of the youngsters clambering ; down from the rocking-horse and drop- | ping their dolls to hear tales of ramp- ing canibals, of weeks in an open boat, of wrecks and castaways on desert is- lands, of fighting the submarine devil- fish of the Huns, Let W. Clarke Russell, Joseph Con- rad, W. W. Jacobs gnasly their envi- ous teeth their most ingenious "and must pal their iaiketiactwal fires before the riot ous outpourings of the sailo:"s Eg nation that these children will hedr as part of their everyday lives on ship- board, Grateful parents will heave a sigh of relief when they behold their children decorous, submissive, in a circle agog and enchained to the story- teller. Biscuits and water may give out, but never a sailor's imagination. To be paid for telling stories that his mates would stuff their ears against as & ten-times-told infliction is a pro- posal that should bring joy to the heart of an old seadog ashore with the call of the sea in his ears like the eternal murmur of a seashell. ------_o----__-. Two Irishmen made their boat fast to a wharf and went to @eep. The boat broke away during the night'and drifted far out to sea. When Mike awoke he could gee nothing but water. He shook Pat and said, "Wake up, quick, Pat. We're not here at all." Pat roused himself and looked ouf and replied, "No, begorra! And we're a long ways from here." in our schools were not known until some time after the invention of printing by John Gutenberg in the fifteenth century. But in all ages there has been an endeavor to teach children, will repay any one to read im any encyclopedia the articles under the heading "Education." And most Bible dictionaries have articles full of inter- est regarding education amongst fois Hebrews. Testament was translated from the Hebrew into Greek there years before Christ. known as the Septuagint, is very valu- shows that learning was associated ever' in Gentile lands with the Bible; though the seventy translators were probably Jewish rabbis. I, "The fear of the Lord is the be- ginning of knowledge' (Prov. 1: 7), and the Bible teaches' us, therefore, that to know and love God and to study His ways and words and works must be the essentials of education. It is sad that in these modern days we have so far departed from truth, for our educational institutions, except those under the control of Christianity, leave God out of their course, some even seek to deny His existence and the revelation of Himeelf in the Bible and in Jesus! © Christ. Here we have our Sunday schools to make up for this "secular" leaving God out of His world God's Command to Parents. II. The Bible throws much responsi- bility upon parents. Children are an heritage and gift from the Lord (Psi: 127), and to let them remain in ig norance is to neglect them aie as Well as to prove disobedient 's command. 'Two results 1 Leavaeabny follow from this neglect: Our children will grow up as animals, having a kind of knowledge, indeed, but knowing nothing of the real mean- ing of life; and the evil forces will grasp them and make them the en- emies of right and of truth. It'is a robbery of the rights of children to in ignorance of Jesus It is the worst form of cruelty to leave them without the blessings able to Bible students, and for us it 9 The mind is, @ power granted by God.' Hence education has to do with daily, living, --_ cleanliness and modesty, and community and nation. of| how God would have ue live in our own personal lives and in our asso- ciation one with another is the Bible idea of true 1 So we read that Jesus increased in wisdom and about 200| Stature and in favor with Ged and This translation, | ™®" Children of the Bible. IV. The Bible teaches that education begins with childhood. How wonder- ful are the places and stories accorded to children in this book! A little girl who was asked by her mother what book she wished to have read to her said: "Read from the Bible. It has so many wonderful stories and you never through the Bible and they are the lights which illuminate many a page. this} The' infant Moses, the lad Joseph, Naaman's little maid, David with his sling, the boy whose few loaves of bread fed a multitude, Timothy learn- ing from his mother and grandmother; and, above all, Jesus in His Bethlehem te and in His Nazareth home-- lew we love to read of them all! And God in the early days said they must be taught to love and serve Him and to know all His wonderful deeds. Yet the Bible teaches also that we are ta continue learning all-the days of our life here on earth, and reveals to us that one of the 'glories of Heaven are to learn more and more every day and' so fit ourselves by God's grace for the wonderful revelations await- ing us when we shall study in God's immediate presence the infinite, un- ending truths of which we have here but the suggestion. ae F. W. Tom- kins. On Sea's Floor. French scientists are proposing to build a submarine boat for the pur- pose of exploring the sea at depths up to sixty fathoms, or 300 feet. ' The craft planned is of small size, only sixty feet long. and is te be built especially to resist pressure. With this idea in view its huil will be circu- lar in section, and to enable it to rest comfortably upon the sea floor it will have two keels. Obviously it could so rest only in comparatively shallow waters, such as those of.the North Sea, which is a vast pond not exceeding thirty fath- oms in depth over the greater part of its area. The proposed study is expected to furnish information that will be of some practical usefulness, inasmuch as nearly all of the fishes that supply, food for man dwell between the sur- face and a depth of 300 feet. small animals they live on, such as crustaceans and mollusks, will be col- lected, and an incidental inquiry will relate to. the transparence of water and intensity of ght at various depths. The a The heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on mo sadder contradiction than the sluggard and the slatéern in their prayers--Jamea Martineau. Because of a perfected system of co-operative municipal ownership, elec- tric light and power are obtainable in Ontario at exceptionally low rates. The Hydro-Hlectric Power Commis: | ion has been in being for some thir. teen years, but the first delivery of energy over the Commission's lines tas about 2®.years ago. At that time the co-opefive union consisted of | only twelve municipalities. The first rate-quotation to these twelve was), only about half the prevailing charge in the communities which previously had been served by private companies engaged in the distribution of elec- tricity. ; Since the first quotation was 'made the world has staggered through the most terrible war in history. It was a struggle that brought intricate prob- lems to organized business.of all sorts. Owing to the enormous cost of war, all money-values were depressed. There was an excess of paper issues, and at the same time a world-wide scarcity of commodities and of labor. The consequence wes a general rise in prices of all sorts. ; The Hydro-Electric System found its operating costs rising, and what- ever construction was necessary was upon an entirely new level of expendi: | ture. Moreover, a'great munitions in- dustry arose which made abnormal de- mands upon the available supply of energy. Despite these conditions the Commission was able to reduce the rates from year to year. In Toronto and in' London, two of the Pioneer Twelve, the average rate today Is 'ties have had ample revenue ' vide _ contingencies, maintain their plants to Ten Years Past and Ten Years More only about one-half of the first "Hyd- ro" quotation in 1911, and one-quar- ter of the charge made by private com- panies in normal peace times. Even under this remarkable rate- sehedule, the co-operating municipati- to take care of their capital investment, pro- for renewals, depreciation and the highest notch of efficiency, and meet all operating expenditure. Mean- while the municipal power union has 244 members instead of 12, and the total investment in the Hydro-Elec- trie System has passed $166,000,000. That is the result of ten years' pro- gress In times of great unrest und un- certainty. What is the prospect for the next ten years, assujning that cur- rept prices will' soon be stabilized ?, One thing is gure: that the steady,' progressive reduction of capital obli- gations will greatly lessen the annual charges against the system as a whole. At the end of the next decade much of the plant. for transforming and transmitting will be free ef incumb- rance, and the rejnaining liability will be-borne very easily. In turn, the in- dabtéduess of the local systems which have been in operation for fifteen or twenty years be similarly re- duced, to the easing of the fixed charges and interest. 'nat means a corresponding lowering. of the rates to municipalities and to consumers, The time is coming when the most violent enemies of Public Owne-sship will freely admit that the rates for light and power in Ontario are the lowest in the world.