MY

Y little Jack Horner had often to sit, and even to sleep, in a corner-a street corner -but it was not much Christmas pie he got. His father lived in a Clare Market court, and thrashed him and turned him out of doors if he came home at night without any money.

How Jack got his money did not matter to Jack's unkind father. I am afraid that the poor little boy had been sometimes driven through fear of a flogging to find things that had not been lost. But when I begin little Jack's little history, he was a crossing-sweeper. Crossing-sweepers are said to have made fortunes, but what Jack made by his broom sometimes amounted to nopence per diem. Of course he made more on other days. On muddy days he sometimes took home a shilling or two, but still his savings never made him liable to the income tax, and of what he got his father nobbled almost all. Besides sweeping, Jack held horses, called cabs, turned Catherine wheels, and walked on his hands.

One day a French acrobat, named Labete, saw him tumbling, and thinking that he could make money out of him, bought him of his father just as if he had been a little negro--and, indeed, he was almost as black. Labete took Jack to France, and Jack was glad to go, for though he was often cuffed and kicked, and downright beaten by his master and his wife, still they fed him better than he had ever been fed before. The other boys, English and French, whom Labete was bringing up, were better-tempered than the lads he had associated with in London; and moreover, Jack was very proud to think that he was being trained to become a regular tumbler. The training was no child's play, however. He was kneaded like dough; his arms and legs were pulled out and about, backwards and forwards, upwards and downwards, until he ached all over; he had to make a windmill of himself with dumb-bells, and to spin round like a top, with heavy weights in his hands that almost wrenched his arms out of their sockets, and to stand and hang head downwards until he was as red in the face as a peony, and the blood pattered out of his nose like rain. However, the result was that he became as tough as leather, and yet as lithe as an eel, as graceful as a leopard, and yet as strong as Hercules-a very different Jack Horner from the one who sits at the corner of the form in the picture.

He got "up" in every branch of his queer "profession," and went over all Europe almost, practising it. Sometimes he was clown; some

times a rope-dancer, sometimes a harlequin, sometimes a horse-rider. He performed in the streets, doing juggling and bending, pyramids and la perche. He writhed up the pole like a snake, spun round on it like an impaled cockchafer, and balanced it on his chin and his nose, his hands and his knees, his elbows and his toes.

When he "did the bender," walking bent backwards on his hands, he looked like a locomotive horse-shoe. If he chanced to slip from the top of the pole, down he came like a cat, and dapped up again like an India-rubber ball. No mate of his was ever shaken from the pole when it was fastened in Jack's waistband, and he could bear up and walk about with-I really am afraid to say how many fellows on him. He could jump like a frog, coming down upon his hands, and throw somersault after somersault, as if he were turning into a wheel. He could tie his limbs into knots like string, and fling about half hundred weights as if he were only chucking halfpence. He could bear to have a paving-stone broken on his breast with a blacksmith's hammer, and break one with his fists as if it had been a nut. He could lift a brewer's horse; he could scramble about a theatre like a monkey, and walk on a ceiling like a fly. He could spin plates on a stick; balance tobacco-pipes, and straws, and feathers, and keep ever so many knives, and rings, and balls in the air at the same time. He could fling up a ball and catch it in a cup strapped upon his head; he could dance on stilts; he could eat fire, swallow knives, and turn sovereigns. into farthings.

Jack was a liberal fellow, and performed the last trick in private as well as public life. In one way or another he made a good bit of money, but he never had a good bit in his pocket long at a time. His father, however, was of opinion that Jack had put in his thumb and pulled out a "plum" from the public's pocket. Meeting Jack, his father had the impudence to maintain that he had been the making of him, and easy-going Jack allowed the old man a pension as long as he lived.

walk, or climb up the rocks to see the young gulls in their nests.

Some people say it is not ladylike for little girls to climb rocks and trees, but that is all nonsense. Climbing about, and swimming and riding, make children healthy and grow; and why should not little girls be healthy as well as boys?

Then sometimes Scaramoutch went and sat on the top of the hill, and looked at the sun setting behind the trees and making everything look like gold; or, better still, when she was awake early enough, she used to look at the sun rising over the sea. First the sky got red all over; then she saw what looked like a bit of red wafer; then the wafer grew bigger and bigger, till at last she saw the whole sun like a great ball of gold, and the tops of the waves all golden too.

Have you ever seen the sun rising over the sea? No? Then mind, the next time you go to the sea-side, you get up early enough to look at it, for it is one of the most glorious sights you

can see.

Then at other times little Scaramoutch would watch the ships sailing away. First she lost sight of the hull, and then the masts disappeared bit by bit, till at last she could only see the tips of the topmasts, and then in a minute all was gone. The ships do not really go into the sea; they only appear to do so, because the earth is round. You will understand all about the ships sailing "down to the under world," as Mr. Tennyson beautifully says, when you get older. I fancy, though, it is "up from the under world;" but the idea is all the same.

Oh! I forgot Scaramoutch's shoes and hat. She did not wear shoes, it was so much more comfortable without. But she wore a hat, made of a convolvulus flower, sometimes white and sometimes coloured, so that she looked something like the Chinamen on your dinner-plates. Perhaps you are not old-fashioned enough to have willow-patterned plates, which is a pity, because the pictures are pretty, and something to look at and think about while May, and Arthur, and Mab are finishing their dinners. Such small people are so slow! Have you ever wondered what the pictures on those plates mean? That queer house, or temple, with the wonderful tree with cannon-ball fruit behind it, and the bridge with those odd fishes carrying scales crossing it, and the caterpillar-tree hanging over it. Then the boat and those two queer birds with four wings in the air, very like the cherubs in old pictures. I am sure it is a very funny story, and perhaps some day, if you are very, very good, I will tell it you.

Now it happened one day, as Scaramoutch was paddling about in her little boat, that she saw a

bright light on the sea, a long way off. She had never seen so bright a light before, and being a little curious (for people were curious in those days as they are now, though not so bad), she thought she would paddle out to it. As she got nearer she saw it was a lovely lady standing in a nautilus-shell. She was dressed in white appleblossom leaves, and she had a rose with gold and silver leaves in her hand, and a star on her head, and it seemed to Scaramoutch that she beckoned her to come. So of course Scaramoutch, being an obedient little Scaramoutch, went as fast as she could, till she came quite close to the beautiful lady. Then she felt a little frightened, for she found herself in such a blaze of light that she was almost blinded.

star.

"Do not be frightened, Scaramoutch," said the fairy, for the lady was a fairy; "my name is PearlI have known you a long time, although you have not known me. Will you come with me, and see the King and Queen of the Fishes? You are a good little girl, I know, and you keep your cottage so clean and orderly; and as I know you are always longing to see the bottom of the sea by the way in which you are always diving, I will take you there if you like to come."

Now, Scaramoutch had often dived down a long way, to try and find the bottom of the sea, and so she knew Pearlstar must be a very clever fairy to read her thoughts. But although she had often tried to find the bottom, she had never found it; for being a Land Baby, and not a Water Baby, she could not live long without air; so she always had to come to the top to breathe before she found the bottom. Sometimes she fancied there was no bottom at all; and whether it was grass, or stones, or seaweed, she could not make up her mind. So now that she was asked to go and see that wonderful place, she cried out, not thinking whether fairies liked such words, "Oh, how jolly!"

It

You see, Scaramoutch was not like some of us, who want a thing till we get it, and then wish we had not got it-so foolish are we in these days! No, Scaramoutch was much wiser (though I dare say she would have been as silly if she had lived now); and instead of saying to herself, "Oh, what a bore! I wish she had not asked me. is such a bother to go to a new place. How can I go down to the bottom of the sea? I dare say we shall never find it: I have often tried and failed; it is too much trouble to try again," and so on; she said, "Oh, how jolly!" But, then, remembering that that was not quite the way to talk to a stranger, she said (hoping Pearlstar had not heard the other words),

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Pearlstar: I should like to go very much indeed." (Continued on page 22.)