"What a shocking thing!" cried the Water-Lily, as its leaves shook with terror. "Those animals! those animals! They are funny creatures. I do indeed value my quiet, peaceful life. I harm nobody, and nobody wants to pick a quarrel with me. I am very luck--" It did not finish what it was saying, for at that instant a boat came gliding close by. "What a pretty little Water-Lily!" cried Ellen, who sat in the boat. "I will have it!" She leant over the gunwale and wrenched off the flower. When she had got home she put it in a glass of water, and there it stood for three days among a whole company of other flowers. "I can't make it out," it said on the morning of the fourth day. "I have not come off a bit better than that miserable Dragon-Fly." "The flowers are now withered," said Ellen, and she threw them out of the window. So there lay the Water-Lily with its fine white petals on the dirty ground. POWDER-POST By C. A. Stephens There is a tiny borer which eats seasoned oak wood, boring thousands of minute holes through it till it becomes a mere shell, and turning out a fine white powder known among country folk as "powder-post." When a shovel or a pitchfork-handle snaps suddenly, or an axe-helve or a rake's tail breaks off under no great strain, the farmer says, "'Twas powder-post." If this small pest obtains lodgment in a barn, or in the oak finish or furniture of a house, it is likely to do a vexatious amount of damage, and no practicable method of checking its ravages has been found. Varnishes do not exclude it. Boiling will kill the borer, but furniture and wainscotings are not easily boiled. From the frames of old buildings, when of oak, powder-post will sometimes run in streams when a beam or brace is struck. But everything has its virtues, if only they can be found out; and long ago, in New England, some rustic AEsculapius discovered that powder-post was a sovereign balm for all flesh-wounds, causing them to heal rapidly, without "proud flesh." And if proud flesh appeared, the wound would still heal if it were opened and dressed with powder-post. What modern medical science would predicate concerning this panacea, I know not, but thousands of cuts in rural districts treated with powder-post did very well, and faith in it waxed strong. So when Sam Eastman cut his foot over in the "east woods," all the wiseacres in the neighborhood declared that that foot must be done up in powder-post. "If it isn't," they said, "proud flesh will get into it, and that boy will be lame all winter." It was a bad cut. Sam and Willis Murch had been splitting four-foot logs, when Sam's axe, glancing from a log, had buried the blade in his instep; the very bones were cut. There were four of us boys at work together. We ran to him, tied a handkerchief round his ankle, and twisted it tight with a stick; but blood flowed profusely. We did not know how to apply a tourniquet.