people stream to it on foot, on horseback, and in creaking carts. Girls with switches in their hands run to the gates to meet the cattle, which are hastening on in a cloud of dust and gnats brought by them from the steppe. Cows and buffaloes wander along the streets, and the Cossack children, in colored robes, run after them. We can hear loud conversation, merry laughter, and shrill cries, interrupted by the lowings of the cattle. Here an armed Cossack, who has obtained a day's furlough from the outpost, rides at full speed up to a cottage, and by a miracle of horsemanship brings his half-tamed steed to a sudden stop within a few inches of the gate. There a high-cheeked Tartar laborer turns his woodenwheeled wagon, loaded with reeds from the steppe, into the village headman's yard, and talks in Tartar with the master.

Beside the pool, which encroaches on the main street of the village, a young woman plods along slowly, bearing a heavy bundle of wood on her back. An old man, just returned from a fishing trip, carries on his shoulder, in a net, a number of silvery herrings, still quivering. Yonder an aged beldame drags a large withered branch of a poplar tree to her hut, and in a few minutes the blows of a hatchet are heard. We hear children shouting, as they whip their tops in the street wherever there is a spot of level ground. From every yard there come the signs of increased work and bustle and preparation for the night.

Mother Mitka, the schoolmaster's wife, is at her gate, watching her cattle. They are being driven along the street by her daughter, Marianka. A

buffalo cow, tormented by a cloud of gnats, bursts her way through the yard gate. After her follow the other cows, glancing at their mistress with their gray eyes, and, at regular intervals, beating their flanks with their tails. Marianka comes up, and her mother, looking at the girl's feet, exclaims sharply, "Your shoes are getting spoiled, child! Take them off at once!"

The girl is not in the least affronted by being so sharply reprimanded - she is rather pleased than otherwise and she gayly goes on with her chores. Her face is enveloped in a twirled handkerchief; she wears a rose-colored garment and a green skirt. She disappears under the shed, where the fat cattle have already hastened, and soon her voice is heard as she caressingly talks to the cow buffalo.

Twilight has now enveloped the village. Everywhere the pungent smell of smoke pervades the air. Along the streets Cossack girls are running, carrying lighted rags in their hands, for lucifer matches are almost unknown in the remote villages of the Caucasus districts. The voices of women and girls call to one another from the yards, but are heard less and less frequently as the evening wears on. The streets become more and more deserted, lights twinkle through the square openings that serve as windows in the mud huts, the flat roofs and funnelshaped chimneys slowly fade from the view, and darkness settles on the scene.

bel' dame, an ugly old woman.
lu' ci fer, match that can be lighted
by striking.

pun' gent, strong; penetrating.
steppe, Russian prairie.

Tol' stoi, famous Russian author.

HASTE NOT, REST NOT.

J. W. VON GOETHE.

Without haste! without rest!
Bind the motto to thy breast;
Bear it with thee as a spell;

Storm or sunshine, guard it well!

Heed not flowers that round thee bloom;

Bear it onward to the tomb!

Haste not; let no thoughtless deed
Mar for e'er the spirit's speed:
Ponder well and know the right;
Onward, then, with all thy might!
Haste not; years can ne'er atone
For one reckless action done!

Rest not; life is sweeping by,
Do and dare, before you die.
Something mighty and sublime
Leave behind to conquer time;
Glorious 'tis to live for aye,
When these forms have passed away!

Haste not! rest not! calmly wait,
Meekly bear the storms of fate;
Duty be thy polar guide;
Do the right, whate'er betide!
Haste not! rest not! conflicts past,
God shall crown thy work at last.

MY FIRST GEOLOGICAL TRIP.

SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE.

We started off about noon, a goodly band of some eight or nine striplings, with two or three hammers and a few pence amongst us.

We arrived at length at the limestone quarries. They had been opened along the slope of a gentle declivity. My companions rushed down the slope with a shout of triumph. For myself, I lingered a moment on the top. With just a tinge of sadness in the thought, I felt that, though striking and picturesque beyond anything of the kind I had ever seen, this cavern was, after all, only a piece of human handiwork.

The heaps of rubbish around me, with the smoking kilns at one end and the clanking engine at the other, had no connection with beings of another world, but told only too plainly of ingenious, indefatigable man. The spell was broken at once and forever, and as it fell to pieces I darted down the slope and rejoined my comrades.

They had already entered a cave, which was certainly vast and gloomy enough for whole legions of gnomes. Not a vestige of vegetation could we see. Away it stretched to the right and to the left in long vistas of gloom, broken by the light which, entering from other openings along the hillside, fell here and there on some hoary pillar, and finally vanished into the shade.

"But where are the petrified forests and fishes?" cried one of the party.

66

"Here!" "Here!" was shouted in reply from the top of the bank.

We made for the heap of broken stones whence the voices had come, and there, truly, on every block and every fragment fossils met our eye, sometimes so thickly grouped together that we could barely see the stone on which they lay. I bent over the mound, and the first fragment that turned up (my first-found fossil) was the one that excited the deepest interest.

The commander-in-chief of the excursion, who was regarded (perhaps as much from his bodily stature as for any other reason) an authority on these questions, pronounced my treasure-trove to be, unmistakably, a fish. True, it seemed to lack head and tail and fins; the liveliest fancy amongst us hesitated as to which marks were the scales; and in after years I learned that it was really a vegetable -the seed-cone or catkin of a large extinct kind of club-moss; but, in the meantime, Tom had declared it to be a fish, and a fish it must assuredly be.

Like other schoolboys, I had, of course, had my lesson on geology in the usual meager cut-and-dried form in which physical science was then taught in our schools. I could repeat a "Table of Formations," and remembered the pictures of some uncouth monsters on the pages of our text-books - one with goggle eyes, no neck, and a preposterous tail; another with an unwieldy body and no tail at all, for which latter defect I had endeavored to compensate by inserting a long pipe into its mouth, receiving from our master (Ironsides, we called him) a hearty rap across the knuckles as a recompense.