Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,

For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care,

To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed,

They wander east, they wander west,

And are baffled, and beaten and blown about By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;

To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest:

O'er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;

To stay at home is best.

Biographical.

HELPS TO STUDY

From his mother Henry Wadsworth Longfellow inherited his poetic nature. She loved flowers, sunshine, poetry, and music, and early instilled a love for them in her boy. His father was a lawyer, noted for his scholarship and purity of character.

He entered Bowdoin College at the age of fourteen and graduated fourth in a class of thirty-eight; afterwards he spent three years in Europe preparing to teach the modern languages in the college from which he had graduated. He afterwards held a similar position at Harvard. He spent nineteen years in teaching, and the remainder of his life he devoted to literature.

Longfellow died in 1882. He was the first American author who was honored with a memorial in Westminster Abbey.

Charles Kingsley said in speaking of Longfellow: "I do not think I ever saw a finer human face." His hair was white and thick; his blue eyes kindly, his voice melodious, and his manner refined.

hov'er ing hanging suspended in the air.

Notes and Questions. What are some of the things necessary to a happy home? What does the poet mean by "baffled and beaten and blown about"? Explain the "winds of the wilderness of doubt." What comparison does he make to impress the thought that to stay at home is best "?

THE CULTIVATION OF PURE FUN

I

"I wish somebody would start a club for the raising of pure fun!"

There were cries of "Hear! Hear!" in a half dozen young voices, and then somebody else called out, "A hundred bushels to the acre, Dick!"

Everybody laughed, and the girls all began talking at the same time. They were returning home in the late afternoon from a lecture delivered to the Boys' Corn Club and the Girls' Tomato Club of their district.

It seemed that Dick Winthrop's laughing suggestion met with almost unanimous approval, for, from one end of the wagon to the other, the girls began advancing suggestions as fast as they could talk, while the boys made polite, but desperate struggles to wedge in a few pointed remarks. It was not until they reached Fanny Trimble's house that the boys had any chance at all, and it was Dick who brought things to a head somehow, Dick had a way of making things happen.

"Friends, Romans, countrymen!" he exclaimed with a decided accent on the "countrymen!" "Let's give ourselves a cordial invitation to get out and eat peaches with Fanny while we fight this thing out."

Fanny seconded the motion hospitably, and in a few minutes, a half dozen half-grown boys and girls had

preëmpted Mrs. Trimble's wide front porch, and baskets of peaches were being passed among them by several of the little Trimbles.

Dick modestly nominated and elected himself temporary chairman of the meeting, and announced as the first by-law that the girls were positively not to do more than three-fourths of the talking. He had trouble in carrying his by-law into effect, however, and finally had to resort to a method by which all could express themselves at once. Pencils and paper had to be brought

into use.

Everybody was to write his ideas of the best methods of raising fun, and all the suggestions were to be read aloud by "the chair" so ruled Dick; but Fanny interfered, and announced that she would read them herself.

When a girl gets restless and tosses her curls, there is not very much that a real manly boy can do toward curbing her, so Fanny read the collected suggestions to the assembled company.

"Hay rides, picnics, parties," she began, but the chair interposed:

"Hay rides and picnics and parties," he declared, "are as much a matter of course as is wash day; take them for granted, and tell us something we do not know." Thereafter the reader had to do a great deal of skipping, for everybody had of course suggested the time-honored diversions first.

"Horseback riding," read Fanny, and the boy who had made the suggestion was on his feet in an instant. "There are plenty of good saddle horses in the neigh