On looking to see what was the matter, we saw a large black snake in the road just ahead of us. Being very reckless children, we slid off old Bob, found some heavy sticks, and attacked the snake. First Dick struck it, and, when it turned on him, I struck it; and so we pounded the snake, turn and turn about, until it was killed. [Illustration] Another thing that we enjoyed very much was to go down to the creek that ran through the farm, and put some ears of green corn in the water close by the edge. We would then keep very still, and watch the corn, and, as soon as we saw it move a little, we would give it a sudden slap out of the water, and would almost always succeed in landing one or two crawfish. We dug wells in the sand, which we would fill with water to put our crawfish in. Sometimes we would have a dozen or more. It would have been great fun to wade in the creek, but for one thing: there were sand-leeches in the water, and they would get between our toes, and bite so firmly into the flesh, that we could hardly get them off. A great event in the day was lunch, which we ate in picnic style on the ground near the spring. We were always so hungry, that the simplest food seemed delicious. I don't think we were ever very fond of bread and butter anywhere else. By night we were very tired, and generally went sound asleep on the way home. A. THE DRAWING-MASTER. OUR Peter has opened a school for teaching drawing. At present he has only two pupils; but he hopes to have more. They pay him two pins a lesson; not a high price. I fear that Peter will not get rich very soon at that rate. [Illustration] But he is no miser. He loves to do good, and to teach to others all the good he knows. So he says to Tom and Harry, "This that I am drawing now is what we call a horizontal line; and this is a curved line. Do you know what a circle is, Tommy?" "A circle is something round, isn't it?" replies Tommy. "A circle," says Peter, drawing one on paper,--"a circle is a plane figure, bounded by a single curved line called its circumference, every part of which is equally distant from a point within it called the centre." "How can I remember all that stuff?" said Harry. "Stuff! Do you call it _stuff_, sir?" said Peter, snapping him twice on his closely-shorn head: "I will teach you not to call my definitions _stuff_." "What's a definition?" asked Tommy. "A definition," said Peter, "is what I say to you when I tell you what a thing means. If I ask you what _green_ is, and I tell you it's the color of fresh summer grass, I give you a definition." "School is out!" cried Harry. "Peter uses too many big words for us. Hallo! there's Bob, the butcher's dog. I'm going to have a frolic with him. Good-by, drawing-master!" And so the school was broken up. "Never did I see boys behave so in school-time," said the teacher.