“Ay, ay; I know,” replied the farmer. “But if you try to make hay of that grass, you’ll be surprised to find how long it takes to make, and how like wool it comes out at last. It is a coarse grass, with no strength in it; and it must be a stronger beast than this that will bear feeding on it. Just do you tell your father what I say, that’s all; and then he can do as he pleases: but I would take a different way with that pony, without loss of time, if it was mine.” Allan did not much like taking this sort of message to his father, who was not altogether so easy to please as he used to be. If anything vexed him ever so little, he always began to complain of his rheumatism—and he now complained of his rheumatism many times in a day. It was managed, however, by tacking a little piece of amusement and pride upon it. Moss was taught, all the way as they went home, after selling their vegetables, how much everything sold for; and he was to deliver the money to his father, and go through his lesson as gravely as any big man. It succeeded very well. Everybody laughed. Woodruffe called the child his little man-of-business; gave him a penny out of the money he brought; and when he found that the child did not like jumping as he used to do, carried him up to the railway to listen for the whistle, and see the afternoon train come up, and stop a minute, and go on again. TOPOGRAPHY AND TEMPERANCE. FROM MR. CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE. “MR. CONDUCTOR, “Sir, I take up my pen to tell you what’s going to happen if the cause of temperance is to be allowed to have unlicensed power to unlicense all the public-houses. We have heard a good deal about the advantages of Temperance (and I don’t deny them), but Mr. Ledru Rollin has taught me to look closer than ever to the dark side of things, and tee-totalism has its dark side like everything else; it is not all clear water, I can tell you. I look forward to the time when strong liquors will be abolished, and pot-houses taken from the corners of the streets or shifted from the sides of the road, and I say, ‘how _shall_ I find my way about?’