A QUEER KIND OF SALT.

THEY had been gathered around uncle Dick, who had just come back from the Old World.

The children all thought this a very queer name, all except Mary, the eldest, who thought she knew a little bit more than anybody else. She told her mother in triumph, that she "got ahead of Lucy Jones the other day, in geography, on the question: 'What is the Old World?'"

And little five-year-old Rose said that she "Fought it was queer it s'ould be older'n any ovver one; s'e dessed zis world was mos' sixty years old!"

But to go back to my story. Mamma came in and said:

"Children, you must go to bed now. I declare, if Rose isn't asleep already over the statue of Milton!"

So with their thoughts full of Milton, they reluctantly went to bed, and I am led to suppose that they dreamed of Milton that night. The next day at dinner they had corn-beef.

"Oh, dear!" said mamma. "This meat has too much saltpetre in it. I declare, I will never buy of that meat-man again!"

After dinner the children gathered around uncle Dick.

"Uncle," said Willie, getting up on uncle's knee, "what was that mamma said the meat had too much of in? Salt—"

"Why, Willie Lathrop!" exclaimed Mary. "It is saltpetre. You ignorant boy; I'm ashamed of you!" Mary was very much ashamed of Willie sometimes, and sometimes he had reason to be ashamed of her.

"What is saltpetre, then, Mary?" said uncle Dick.

"Why, wh-y, wh-y—it's saltpetre. That's all I know."

"Then you see that after all you don't know so much," said he.

Perhaps this was unkind, but he did not mean it to be so.

"Do tell us about it," said the children, all except Mary, she had gone over in the corner of the sofa.

"Well," continued uncle Dick, "when I was in India, it lay all over the ground like the snow here in winter, (only not so thick) in some parts of the country—kind of salt. When tasted it has a cooling, but bitter taste. About an inch of the earth is taken up and put in large tanks something like that you saw at Long Branch last summer (only not near so large) full of water, and soaked there. The water is then taken out, and the saltpetre is found in the bottom of the tanks. The most that we use comes from the East Indies. It is sometimes called nitre. In a great many places it is also found in caves."

"Well, now," said mamma, who had come in during the conversation, "that's something I never knew before."

"Nor I either," said Mary.

"But you know a little more about it than you did awhile ago, don't you?"

This from uncle Dick.

"How queer!" said Freddie and Willie.