LITMIR.BIZ

      The Little Ship

      "I have made a nice little ship, of cork, and am going to let it sail in this great basin of water. Now let us fancy this water to be the North-Pacific Ocean, and those small pieces of cork on the side of the basin, to be the Friendly Islands, and this little man standing on the deck of the ship, to be the famous navigator, Captain Cook, going to find them."

      "Do you know that the Friendly Islands were raised by corals?"

      "I suppose they were."

      "Do you know where Captain Cook was born?"

      "He was born at Marton, a village in the North Riding of Yorkshire, in England."

      The Little Girl and the Shell

      When I went to visit a friend, the other day, I saw a little girl with whom I was much pleased. She sat on a low seat by the fire-side, and she held in her hand a pretty white sea-shell, faintly tinted with pink, which she kept placing against her ear; and all the while a settled calm rested upon her face, and she seemed as if she were listening to the holy tones of some loved voice; then taking it away from her ear, she would gaze upon it with a look of deep fondness and pensive delight. At last I said,

      "What are you doing, my dear?"

      "I am listening to the whisper."

      "What whisper?" I asked.

      "The whisper of the sea," she said. "My uncle sent me this shell, and a letter in which he said, 'If I placed it against my ear I should hear the whisper of the sea;' and he also said, he would soon come to us, and bring me a great many pretty things; and mamma said, when we heard the whisper of the shell, we would call it uncle Henry's promise. And so it became very precious to me, and I loved its sound better than sweet music."