Ding, Dong, Bell! Is it from a belfry, or the beating heart Of the year, this swell, Solemn like the steps of friends who have to part? Ding, Dong, Bell! Ding, Dong, Bell! Little children's homes in heaven and on earth, All have hearts to tell How good actions overflow the year with mirth: Ding, Dong, Bell! Ding, Dong, Bell! And it needeth not a steeple's voice to say, What a dreary knell Hearts are ringing as their goodness flies away: Ding, Dong, Bell! Ding, Dong, Bell! Down the turnpike for you comes another year; Children, treat it well: Naught but goodness brings to homes right jolly cheer: Ding, Dong, Bell! _John Weiss._ FARMING FOR BOYS. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE, AND WHAT OTHERS MAY DO IN THE CULTIVATION OF FARM AND GARDEN,--HOW TO BEGIN, HOW TO PROCEED, AND WHAT TO AIM AT. NO. I. There is an old farm-house in the State of New Jersey, not a hundred miles from the city of Trenton, having the great railroad which runs between New York and Philadelphia so near to it that one can hear the whistle of the locomotive as it hurries onward every hour in the day, and see the trains of cars as they whirl by with their loads of living freight. The laborers in the fields along the road, though they see these things so frequently, invariably pause in their work and watch the advancing train until it passes them, and follow it with their eyes until it is nearly lost in the distance. The boy leans upon his hoe, the mower rests upon his scythe, the ploughman halts his horses in the furrow,--all stop to gaze upon a spectacle that has long ceased to be either a wonder or a novelty. Why it is so may be difficult to answer, except that the snorting combination of wheels, and cranks, and fire, and smoke, thundering by the quiet fields, breaks in upon the monotonous labor of the hand who works alone, with no one to converse with,--for the fact is equally curious, that gangs of laborers make no pause on the appearance of a locomotive. They have companionship enough already. This old wooden farm-house was a very shabby affair. To look at it, one would be sure that the owner had a particular aversion to both paint and whitewash. The weather-boarding was fairly honeycombed by age and exposure to the sun and rain, and in some places the end of a board had dropped off, and hung down a foot or two, for want of a nail which everybody about the place appeared to be too lazy or neglectful to supply in time. One or two of the window-shutters had lost a hinge, and they also hung askew,--nobody had thought it worth while to drive back the staple when it first became loose.