life!" the poor wire groans, and at last, at _last_, having suffered a life-time of torture, so it thinks, though really its whole journey has not taken more than half a minute, it drops breathless and exhausted into the box below. Let us go around and look at it, poor thing! Why, how it shines! And what a merry company it has gotten among! Not alone any more; literally millions of friends of the same outward appearance as itself. "Hairpins!" you exclaim. Yes, indeed; hairpins for the million. Can it be possible that the world will ever want them all? But how pretty they are; and how smooth and fine their points are! Besides, those horrible pinches which we thought were simply vents for ill-humor, were to put those convenient crinkles into the pins, and help them perform their duty in life. In short, the dabs, and pinches, and grindings, hard as they were to bear, were the very things which shaped a mere bit of wire into a useful member of society. And, when one thinks of it, what a bit of time it took--this preparation--compared with the time which they will now spend in usefulness! No wonder the hairpins in the great box shone brightly when at last they began to understand it all. The question is, little Pansy Blossoms, can you and I, as we stand looking at them, and thinking of all this, learn a lesson which will apply to our _human_ rubs, and pinches, and sharp places? If this be so, then we shall be well repaid for going, and seeing, and thinking. "OLD ABE." SOME years ago a man in the West saw an eagle lighting frequently upon a spot high among the rocks. Observing her movements he saw her nest was there and she was raising her family in that palace of rocks. "Now," he thought, "is the time for me to find out if this grand bird can be tamed." His neighbors said it could not be done. He quietly resolved to try. But how to get an eaglet was the question. Day after day he would go alone and examine the rocks to see if there was not some way of getting to the nest. There seemed to be none. It was a ledge, almost smooth, and one hundred feet high where the nest was. No ladder would reach it, and if he should go around and climb to the top, he would not be near, as it was many feet down. One night as he lay thinking the thing over, a thought struck him. "I will go to the top, fasten a rope and let myself down and capture one and climb up again." In the morning he was a bit wiser and said: "Now if something _should_ happen while I am down there pocketing a young eagle, I might need both hands; in that case how could I climb up? I'll tell the secret to John and Joe Grimes." So they went around to the top of the ledge where they could look over down to the nest. The old eagle was gone; but there were the five children, talking together at a great rate, not thinking who were near by listening to their conversation and about to knock at their door.