Part 24 (1/2)

”I am sure I would not play with it,” said Harry.

”You might get an ugly scratch, if you did,” said the captain.

”Aha!” cried Mary; ”I've found you out: you have been telling us of our country and what is done at home all this while!”

”But we don't burn stones, or eat grease and powdered seeds, or wear skins and caterpillars' webs, or play with tigers,” said Harry.

”No?” said the captain. ”Pray, what is coal but a kind of stone; and is not b.u.t.ter, grease; and wheat, seeds; and leather, skins; and silk, the web of a kind of caterpillar; and may we not as well call a cat an animal of the tiger kind, as a tiger an animal of the cat kind?”

”So, if you will remember what I have been describing, you will find that all the other wonderful things that I have told you of, are well known among ourselves.”

”I have told you the story to show that a foreigner might easily represent every thing among us as equally strange and wonderful, as we could with respect to his country.”

Directions for Reading.--Point out breathing-places in the last paragraph.

Name the _emphatic words_ in the last paragraph.

p.r.o.nounce carefully the following words: _vegetable, foreigner, beasts, products, across, again, also, ap.r.o.n_.

Language Lesson.--Let pupils express the meaning of what is given below in dark type, using a single word for each example.

Houses built of _earth hardened by fire_.

The walls have _holes to let in the light_.

They were covered with _a sort of transparent stone_.

They drink _water in which dry leaves have been steeped_.

Many wore cloth woven from _a sort of wool grown in pods_.

LESSON XXIV.

lin'net, _a kind of bird_.

com pare', _be equal; have similar appearance_.