items concerning which Master Charlie desired further enlightenment. "For information touching these matters, my dear Charles," then said Uncle Juvinell, "I will pass you over to Willie and Dannie, who, I dare say, are quite as well posted up in matters of this kind, as your old uncle; for, if I mistake not, they have just been reading Catlin's book on the Indians, and Gulliver's Travels in Brobdignag." "How is it," inquired Ellen, "that Washington, being the good man that he was, could have taken part in that wicked war between the French and English about a country that didn't belong to either of them, but to the poor Indians?" Now, although Uncle Juvinell was satisfied in his own mind that Washington's conduct in this matter was just what it should have been, yet, for all that, he was a little puzzled how to answer this question in a way that the little folks would rightly understand. "This very thing, my dear niece," replied he after a moment's pause, "grieved and troubled his mind a great deal, as you may well believe: but he knew, that, if the English did not get possession of this land, the French would; and this, by increasing the strength of the enemy, would by and by endanger the safety of his own native land, and even the lives and liberties of his countrymen. And he also knew that it would be far better for the spread of useful knowledge and the true religion, that all this rich country should be in the hands of some Christian people, who would make it a place fit to live in, and to be peaceful and prosperous and happy in, than that it should be left entirely to those barbarous savages, who only made of it a place to hunt and to fish in, to fight and scalp, and to burn and torture each other like devils in. Besides this, it is the duty of every true patriot (and no one knew this better than he) to serve and defend the country, under the protection of whose laws he has lived in peace and plenty, against all her enemies, whether at home or abroad, even should she now and then be a little in the wrong; for, by so doing, he defends his own home and family, rights and liberty,--objects that should be as dear to him as life itself." "O uncle!" exclaimed Ned with a start, as if he had just caught a passing recollection by the tail as it was about skedaddling round the corner, "tell me, will you? what kind of a life a charmed life is."