half the servants that were ordained to work for you since the foundation of the world, or else you would not be delving in the ditches and drudging with your hands, instead of letting your brains grow, that you may direct us. What do you mean by letting little children toil in your miserable factories, and become dwarfed in body and soul, when here am I, and a hundred other giants like myself, any one of whom could do the work of ten thousand of those and never feel it, and you give us no work to do?" 10. "You are a kind-hearted old genie,* I am sure," said the boy; “and, if I live, my work shall be to introduce you to the acquaintance of men. But tell me something of your history. Where have you been all these years, that no one has found you out?" 11. "Where I am now, and in similar places, though not always so tightly pressed. And, indeed, I have not been idle, though my appetite for work has never been half supplied. I am one of the elder children of the flood, and began my work in the world before your race appeared upon it. Before the rain began her ministry, I arose from my hidden retreats in the earth, and watered the earliest of gardens. Ever since then I have been carrying on a great system of irrigation: rising from the ocean into the sky, sailing in great fleets laden with treasure toward the mountain-sides where my bounties have been bestowed; sinking then, in a slightly altered form, into the earth, and visiting the roots of all the trees with supplies of food, creeping up through all their veins and into their broad green leaves, whence I escape into the air again. You see I have had something to do. But all this quiet work is only half enough for me. Work is my nature; so do not be afraid of overtasking me. I can not have too much." 12. "James! What are you doing?" cried the old lady * GENIE (jë'ny), one of a class of fabulous beings, supposed to be created of fire, and capable of assuming, at pleasure, any form, visible or invisible. from her straight-backed chair. "Here you have done nothing all the day but tilt the cover of the kettle. Go to your task now, like a man, and be of some use to the world." 13. Ah! grandma," said James, "I have been doing a thousand days' work, sitting here by the fireside." "Do not be fooling, you idle dreamer! Work, and you will thrive; be lazy, and you will come to naught." 14. Nevertheless, James's dreams came to more use than many a grown man's work, because he had the faculty of thinking to a purpose; and, in the many talks he held with the friendly old giant, he learned, one after another, the secrets of his power. When lessons were over, the giant told wonderful stories to his young disciple; and perhaps I can repeat one of them in a few words. 15. "In old times there was a long-continued contest between the land and the sea. At first the sea had been the monarch, and ruled over the whole surface of the globe. At length the land appeared, claiming a large part of his domain; and this enraged the sea, who beat wrathfully with whole armies of billows upon her shore, and threatened to conquer back all that he had lost. 16. "Presently came the children of the land: first, the little grasses, that, tenderly embracing their mother, protected her from being quite carried away by the rude invading sea; and, at length, the taller trees, the great pines and oaks that added greatly to her beauty and glory. 17. "Then a new thought occurred to the land, and she sent out these her greater children to subdue the sea on his own domains. They rode triumphantly over the billows, and, aided by the friendly winds, plied diligently from place to place, increasing everywhere the wealth and glory of their mother. But the sea arose in his wrath, and often ingulfed these faithful children of the land, or broke their bones, and cast them up on her lap in bitter scorn and defiance. 18. "Then the land resolved to take a more exquisite revenge than ever before. And she called forth a mighty spirit from the bosom of the sea himself, a weird, white, gigantic genie, who had been the eldest child of the flood. She gave him an armor of iron scales which the sea could not break, and upon him she laid her spells, and he went obediently to and fro at her bidding. Thus the land was at last triumphant, as organized brain always will be over brute natural force; and the children of men passed over land and sea in safety toward their goal of perfect knowledge." 19. "But part of that is prophecy," said the white giant, when he had finished the story. "It shall be fact before many years," said James. "And you, my good giant, are the genie who shall finish the tale." 20. Soon swift cars were running to and fro the whole length of the kingdom, propelled by the giant's arms. Soon, too, the tasks of the little children at the factories were done by the same old worker, who could drive a million spindles at a stroke quite as easily as a child could move one; and if the children were still employed, it was only to keep the giant supplied with work enough, which indeed was no easy task. 21. His good nature was equal to all the tasks which could be imposed upon him. If you have ever seen his white beard rising above the chimney of some factory on a winter morning, or puffing out of the escape-valve of some little tug, you may almost have mistaken him, in the wavy, graceful lines of his white drapery, for a sunny cloud,— which, indeed, would not be the greatest of mistakes. 22. Before long the great ocean-going ships had the giant established in their holds, and their ponderous wheels moved by his iron arms, so that, independently of wind or tide, they could hold their course night and day, and, like swiftly moving shuttles, weave the continents together with bands of neighborly good-will. "Our Young Folks." (Adapted.) WORD ANALYSIS AND DEFINITIONS. Dis ci'ples (disco, I learn), learners; followers. Fac to'ry (fact, made; ory, the place where), a place where things are made. In vis'i ble (in, not; vis, seen; ible, may be), incapable of being seen. LESSON X. FULTON'S FIRST STEAM-BOAT. 1. The history of the steam-engine is full of instruction. The Marquis of Worcester,* early in the reign of Charles II., first directed the attention of the public to the expansive power of steam when used in a close vessel, and of its capacity to be employed as a moving power in machinery. The suggestion slept almost without notice, until about the year 1698, when Captain Savery, a man of superior ingenuity, constructed an apparatus, for which he obtained a patent, to apply it to practical purposes. The invention of the safety-valve soon afterward followed; and that again was succeeded by the use of a close-fitted piston working in a cylinder. 2. Still, however, the engine was comparatively of little use, until Mr. Watt, a half-century afterward, effected the grand improvement of condensing the steam in a separate vessel, communicating by a pipe with the cylinder; and Mr. Washbrough, in 1778, by the application of it to produce a * This nobleman took part in the civil war between Charles I. and his Parliament on the side of the King, and, being made prisoner, was confined in the Tower. It was during his captivity that he made the observations that resulted in his subsequent invention. His "Century of Inventions,” in which he described his steam-engine, was published in 1663. He died in 1667. rotary motion, opened the most extensive use for mechanical purposes. 3. It was in reference to the astonishing impulse thus given to mechanical pursuits, that Dr. Darwin, more than forty years ago, broke out in strains, equally remarkable for their poetical enthusiasm and prophetic truth, and predicted the future triumph of the steam-engine. 4. "Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; 5. What would he have said, if he had but lived to witness the immortal invention of Fulton, which seems almost to |