"Well, Charley, I told you there was one more thing the master told us to do, out of school. This was, when we went to church, on Sunday, to listen very carefully to the minister's sermons, and when we got home, to put down the text and all the rest we could remember, and bring to him, on Monday morning, to be examined. He said this would improve us in the same ways, as keeping diaries would. We obeyed him, and some of the scholars became so skilful, that they could remember and write down more than half of both sermons. I think I have some of my notes, still left, and if so I'll let you see them. Perhaps they will help you to make a beginning in this too. Now, Charley, I want you to try this, as well, as the other. Will you, for the sake of pleasing uncle Brown?" "As sure, as I live, uncle, I will, and I'll begin the very next Sunday, and see what I can do; and if I don't make out very well at first, I'll keep trying till I can do better." "Thank you, my boy. And now I won't tell you but one more of these things, at present, but leave them till other occasions. You don't know one of the strongest reasons, why I wish you to have a Museum, and to get a knowledge of natural history." "What is the reason, uncle? Won't you tell me?" "It is, Charley, to prevent you, at least while you are so young, from forming the habit of reading the kinds of novels and stories, which are so plentiful now-a-days. I mean those, which are filled with all sorts of wild, horrible things. Reading such books would be very likely to make your mind sick, as taking poison would your body, and then you would'nt like to study or to read at all, books that would make you wise and good. Why, sometimes such stories drive people actually crazy." "I'll tell you something, that happened to me once, when I was quite a small boy, that made me almost crazy, for a while, and it is a wonder, that it didn't make me quite so. "I heard a story told, one day, which of course was the same thing as reading it. This story was, that a traveller, being once on a journey through a wild country, full of woods and rocks, came by a large cave, in the side of a hill and partly under ground, and for some reason went into it. He found there a horrible looking creature, a woman, as tall as a giant, down to the waist, and the lower part of her a long, monstrously large snake.