“O Mrs. Farley, we have wanted that more than anything else in the world; ever since Mr. Sherrill saw how my brother Norman loved music, and said it might be the saving of him; Jerry and I have planned and planned, but we never thought of being able to do it for a long, long time.” Yet all this joy was over an old, somewhat wheezy little house organ which stood in the second-story unused room of Mrs. Farley’s house, and which she had threatened to send to the city auction rooms to get out of the way. She offered to lend it to Nettie for her “Rooms,” and Nettie’s gratitude was so great that the blood seemed inclined to leave her face entirely for a minute, then thought better of it and rolled over it in waves. POEM FOR RECITATION. WHAT THE LECTURER TOLD THE BOYS. KIT and I (he’s Christopher, but it’s pretty hard to speak) Had been talking about the lecture, the better part of a week. I was fourteen last Wednesday, and Kit is twelve and a half— We’re getting to be big fellows; folks call us “twins” for chaff. One of the famous lecturers was to lecture in our town hall— Our father used to know him, when both of them were small. We are the minister’s boys, you know, and live in the house on the hill; The rest of us is mother, and Susie, and little Will. [Illustration: “THE SCHOOLROOM WAS PACKED AND CROWDED.”] Father went to the station, to bring the lecturer home, And mother had supper ready, waiting for him to come— He was what Sue calls “splendid!” talked lots to Kit and to me, And took up little Willie, and held him on his knee, And while he was eating supper said a good many funny things, And joked with mother and Susie—it seemed as if time had wings— But O, that grand, grand lecture was the best we ever heard! Folks held their breaths to listen, for fear they should lose a word. They cried, and they applauded, and then they laughed outright— Kit and I decided to lecture before we went home that night. He was going back in the morning, on the early morning train, And father let us sit up that night, said “it wouldn’t happen again.” One of us sat each side of him, as near as we could to his chair, And then Kit noticed, and so did I, a scar near the edge of his hair. He saw us looking, and then he said, “My boys, you see that scar, It isn’t a wound of honor, but something different far. “I am going to tell you about it. I got it on a day When I was young as you are, and that isn’t so far away. You think it easy to move a crowd as breezes sweep the sea, It may be easy for some men, it never has been for me. “I was the timidest, awkwardest youth that ever fished in a pool, Or ever on Wednesday afternoons ran away from school— That was the day we ‘spoke pieces,’ but that I never did, I stayed at school and was punished, or ran away and hid.