PRONUNCIATION.--Cai'ro (Ki'ro), Gaʼza 7, Arab 27a, al-lows' 1, fast'ened 21, ar-ranged' 1, Eu-ro-pe'an 26f, as sure' 16 and 19, hos'tile 5a.

CROSSING THE ARABIAN DESERT.

1. GAZA is upon the edge of the desert. It is there that you charter your camels-the ships of the desert—and lay in your stores for the voyage.

2. In a couple of days I was ready to start. According to the contract made with me, I was to reach Cairo within ten days from the commencement of the journey. I had four camels, one for my baggage, one for each of my servants, and one for myself. Four Arabs, the owners of the camels, came with me on foot.

3. My stores were a small soldier's tent, two bags of dried bread, a couple of bottles of wine, two goat-skins filled with water, tea, sugar, cold tongue, and a jar of Irish butter. There was also a small sack of charcoal; for the greater part of the desert through which we were to pass is destitute of fuel.

4. The camel kneels to receive her load, and for a while she allows the packing to go on with silent resignation; but when she begins to suspect that her master is putting more than a just burden on her poor hump, she turns round her supple neck and looks sadly at the increasing load.

5. She then gently remonstrates against the wrong with the sigh of a patient wife. If sighs will not move you, she can weep; you soon learn to pity her, and soon to love her for her gentle, womanish ways.

6. You cannot, of course, put a riding-saddle upon the back of the camel; but your quilt or carpet, or whatever you carry for the purpose of lying on at night, is folded and fastened on the packsaddle upon the top of the hump, and on this you ride, or rather sit. You sit as a man sits on a chair when he sits astride and faces its back.

7. In passing the desert you will find your Arabs wanting to start and to rest at all sorts of odd times. They like, for instance, to be off at one in the morning, and to rest during the whole of the afternoon. You must not give way to their wishes in this respect. I tried their plan once, and found it very harassing.

8. An ordinary tent can give you very little protection against heat. The fire strikes fiercely through single canvas; and you soon find that whilst you lie crouching, and striving to hide yourself from the blazing face of the sun, his power is harder to bear than it is when you boldly defy him from the back of your camel.

9. It had been arranged with my Arabs that they were to bring with them all the food which they would want for themselves during the passage of the desert. On the evening of the second day, however, just before we encamped for the night, my four Arabs came to my interpreter, and formally announced that they had not brought with them one atom of food, and that they looked entirely to my supplies for their daily bread.

10. This was awkward intelligence. We were now just two days deep in the desert, and I had brought with me no more bread than might be reasonably required for myself.

11. I believed at the moment. for it seemed likely enoughthat the men had really mistaken the terms of the arrangement; and feeling that half-rations would be a less evil than the starvation of my Arabs, I at once told the interpreter to assure them that my bread should be equally shared with all.

12. The interpreter, however, did not approve of this concession. He assured me quite positively that the Arabs thoroughly understood the agreement, and that, if they were now without food, they had willfully brought themselves into this strait, for the wretched purpose of bettering their bargain by the value of a few paras' worth of bread.

13. This suggestion made me look at the affair in a new light. I should have been glad enough to put up with the slight privation to which my concession would subject me; but it seemed to me that the scheme had something of audacity in it, and was calculated to try the extent of my softness.

14. I well knew the danger of allowing the trial to result in a conclusion that I was one who might be easily cheated. After thoroughly satisfying myself that the Arabs had really understood

the arrangement, I determined that they should not now violate it by taking advantage of my position in the midst of their big desert.

15. So I desired him to tell them that they should touch no bread of mine. We stopped, and the tent was pitched. The Arabs came to me, and prayed loudly for bread; I refused them.

"Then we die! God's will be done."

16. I gave the Arabs to understand that I regretted their perishing by hunger, but I should bear this calmly like any other misfortune not my own-that in short I was happily resigned to their fate.

17. The men would have talked a great deal, but they were under the disadvantage of addressing me through a hostile interpreter. They looked hard in my face, but they found no hope there; so at last they retired, as they pretended, to lay them down and die.

18. In about ten minutes from this time I found that the Arabs were busily cooking their bread. Their pretense of having brought no food was false, and invented only for the purpose of saving it. They had a good bag of meal which they had contrived to stow away under the baggage, upon one of the camels, in such a way as to escape notice.

19. In Europe the detection of a scheme like this would have occasioned a disagreeable feeling between the master and the offender; but you would no more recoil from an Oriental on account of a matter of this sort than in England you would reject a horse that had tried and failed to throw you.

20. Indeed I felt quite good-humored toward my Arabs, because they had so woefully failed in their wretched attempt, and because, as it turned out, I had done what was right. They too, poor fellows, evidently began to like me immensely, on account of the hard-heartedness which had enabled me to baffle their scheme.

21. The Arabs adhere to those ancestral principles of breadbaking which have been sanctioned by the experience of ages. The very first baker that ever lived must have done his work exactly as the Arab does at this day.

22. He takes some meal and holds it in the hollow of his hand whilst his comrade pours over it a few drops of water; he then mashes up the moistened flour into a paste, which he pulls into small pieces and thrusts into the embers.

23. During this passage we fell in with a chief of the deserttribes. I made him sit down by my side, and gave him a piece of bread and a cup of water from out of my goat-skins.

24. This was not very tempting drink to look at, for it had become turbid and was deeply reddened by some coloring matter from the skins. But it kept its sweetness, and tasted like a decoction of soleleather. The chief sipped this, drop by drop, rolling his eyes solemnly round between every draught, in a rapture of delight.

LESSON CLVI.

A-BYSS', (Greek, without bottom,) a deep | HARʼROW-ING, tormenting.

gulf, a deep mass of waters.

DELL, a narrow valley.

DO-MAIN', dominion, empire.

GORGEOUS, showy, splendid.

IN-HALE', to breathe in.

MAN'I-TO, Indian name of the Deity.
SUB-MERGED', under water.

UN-BLENCH'ING, not shrinking, firm.

PRONUNCIATION.-Nest'le 21, be-neath' 15, a'ged 33, tot'ter-ing 36, fal'ter-ing 36,

fear 22, the 31, a 31.

WHAT IS LIFE?

1. AN eagle flew up, in his heavenward flight,
Far out of the reach of human sight,
And gazed on the earth from his lordly hight
In the clouds of the upper air.

"And this is life," he exultingly screams,

"To soar without fear where the lightning gleams,
And unblenching to gaze on the sun's gorgeous beams,
And know of no harrowing care.'

2. A lion leaped from his bloody bed,

And roared till it seemed he would wake the dead;
And man and beast from him trembling fled,

As though there were death in the tone.
"And this is life," he triumphantly cried,
"To hold my domain in the forest wide,
Imprisoned by nought but the ocean's tide
And the ice of the frozen zone."

3. "It is life," said a whale, "to swim in the deep,
O'er hills submerged and abysses to sweep,
Where the gods of ocean their revels keep,
In the fathomless gulf below-

To bask on the bosom of tropical seas,
And inhale the fragrance of Ceylon's breeze,
Or sport where the turbulent waters freeze,
In the climes of eternal snow."

4. "It is life," I hear a butterfly say,
"To revel in blooming gardens by day,
And nestle in cups of flowerets gay,

When the heavens with stars are bright;
To steal from the rose its delicate hue;
To sip from the hyacinth glittering dew,
And catch from the beds of the violets blue
The richest and sweetest delight."

5. "It is life," a majestic war-horse neighed,
"To prance in the glare of musket and blade,
Where thousands in terrible death are laid,

And to smell of the streaming gore;

To rush unappalled through the fiery heat,
And to trample the dead beneath my feet,
To the trumpet's clang and the drum's loud beat,
And hear the artillery roar."

6. "It is life," said a savage, with hideous yell,
"To roam unshackled the mountain and dell,
And feel my bosom with majesty swell,
As the first possessor of all;

To gaze on the earth, the sky, and the sea,
And know that, like them, I am chainless and free;
And am never, while breathing, to bend the knee
But at the Great Manito's call."

7. An aged Christian went tottering by,

And white was his hair, and dim was his eye;
And his broken spirit seemed ready to fly,
While he said, with faltering breath:
"It is life to move, from the heart's first throes,
Through youth and manhood, to age's snows,
In a ceaseless circle of joys and woes;
It is life to prepare for death.”

CHARLES A. DRAKE.

LESSON CLVII.

A-SY'LUM, a place of retreat and secu-
rity.
CON-STRAIN', to compel, to force.
EX-ULT-A'TION, (Latin exulto, to leap
up,) great gladness, triumph.
HAR BOR, to shelter, to secrete.
LAUREL, a kind of tree. The laurel was
used in making wreaths for victors.
LIN'E-AGE, race, descent.

| SANC'TU-A-RY, (Latin sanctus, sacred,) a sacred place.

TRANS-AT-LAN TIC, being over the Atlan-
tic. When used by one in Europe, or
supposing himself in Europe, it signi-
fies being in America.

UN-MO-LEST ́ED, not disturbed.
VIS'I-BLY, in a manner perceptible by
the eye, plainly.

PRONUNCIATION.-Rap'id 1, be-friend' 1, heard 33, staunched 20, a-sy'lum 26c, pa'tri-o-tism 276, de-scend ́ed 1, ex-traor'di-na-ry 33, pa-tri-ot′ic 276,

her'o-ism 27a.

SCENE BETWEEN A BRITISH OFFICER AND AN AMERICAN LADY.

Enter CAPT. WATSON, a wounded officer, to MRS. ELLIOT, who is seated at a table, reading.

Capt. Watson. For heaven's sake, Madam, give me shelter, or I am lost! The enemy is pursuing me with rapid steps. I am faint and wounded-I can fight no longer, and, unless you befriend me,I must perish!

Mrs. Elliot. Your garb bespeaks you an enemy of my country; yet I cannot treat you as such at a moment like this. You do, indeed, look faint and suffering. Where are you wounded, sir?