The little packages of sleeping fire are taken to another room, where on each one is placed a stamp certifying the payment to the government of one cent revenue tax. Equipped with these passes the boxes are placed in larger ones, and these again in wooden cases, which are to be shipped to all parts of the country, and over seas. All this trouble over such little things as matches! Yet on these fire-tipped bits of wood millions of people depend for warmth, cooked food and light. They have become a necessity, and the day of flint, steel and tinder seems almost as far away in the past as are the bow and fire-stick of the Indian. Some idea of the number of matches used in North America during a year may be gained from the fact that it is estimated by competent judges that, on an average, six matches are used every day by each inhabitant; this gives a grand total of 87,400,000,000 matches, without counting those that are exported. Now, this would make a single line, were the matches placed end to end, more than 2,750,000 miles in length! It would take a railroad train almost eight years to go from one end to the other, running forty miles an hour all the time. How apt to our subject is that almost worn-out Latin phrase, "_multum in parvo_"--much in little! Much labor, much skill, and much usefulness, all in a little piece of wood scarcely one-eighth of an inch through and about two inches long! [Illustration: Finis] [Illustration: WHERE AUNT ANN HID THE SUGAR] WHERE AUNT ANN HID THE SUGAR BY MARY L. BOLLES BRANCH.