It is said that this enormous cannon, the bore of which was so large that you might sleep inside of it if you felt sure it was not to be used before you came out, was never fired but once, and the inhabitants of the locality where it stood (or still stands, for all I know,) believe that the ball is flying yet. It would certainly be unpleasant if any of us happened to be taking a walk through a pleasant country, to meet this ball so suddenly that there would be no time to turn out for it. But one of our great American guns, that carry a five-hundred pound ball for five or six miles, would certainly be able to knock this Chinese cannon into a thousand splinters, if it could but once get a fair crack at it. I wonder what the ancients, with their battering rams, and catapults, and javelins, and slings, and arrows, would have thought, if an American field-battery had opened upon one of their bravest armies. In that case I think that even Achilles would have thought it as necessary to take the same care of his whole body as he had before taken of his heel—which you remember was the only part of him that was vulnerable to the weapons of that day. TOM REYNOLDS AND MORIYAMA. “Fun,” exclaimed Tom Reynolds, “You couldn’t have more fun than I had. No boy could stand it.” This was said to a boy-friend after Tom had come home from Japan. And Tom was right. He had had a splendid time. Tom Reynolds was an American boy, whose father was engaged in business which made it necessary for him to visit Yokohama in Japan. It is probable that he would not have thought of taking Tom with him on this trip if it had not been for Moriyama. This yellow youth put the idea into Tom’s head, and Tom, who was as good a talker as he was a walker, which is saying a great deal, managed to convince his father that nothing would be of as great advantage to him as a journey to Japan. School was nothing to a trip like this, Tom argued, and he argued so much that the end of it was he went to Japan. Moriyama was a Japanese boy, and a first-rate fellow. He was one of the many Japanese youths who came to America to be educated, and he went to Tom’s school. There these two boys became great friends. Moriyama was a very quick, bright youth. He could speak English very well, and he was rather better at English grammar than most of the other fellows in that school. The other fellows explained this by saying that Moriyama didn’t know anything about our grammar except what he had learned from books, and of course the books were right. But they had learned their grammar from all sorts of people, ever since they were little bits of chaps. And so they had learned all sorts of grammar, and had a good deal to unlearn when they came to the school. But the fact was that Moriyama was as thoroughly in earnest about his studies as most boys are about base-ball. So it was no wonder that he succeeded.