was a great pile of coal which had been blasted out the night before. The miners told Sandy that an electrical machine was used to cut an opening into the face of the tunnel level with the floor and several inches high. After this was done, deep holes were drilled at the top and sides of the coal vein. These holes were filled with powder and during the night the coal was blasted down.

The men began to work immediately with great shovels throwing the coal into a square iron car which stood on the tracks near by. When the car was filled, the electric locomotive came and hauled it away. Sandy was permitted to ride on the car to the bins. First, it was hauled to the scale-house where the coal was weighed, for the men were paid for each ton of coal mined instead of by the day.

After the coal was weighed it was dumped into a huge bin under the rails. From these bins great buckets lifted the coal up through a shaft to the ground above and then to a high tower where the buckets were emptied. Out of these buckets the coal rolled, over great screens, or sifters, which separated the lumps of different sizes, and then it rolled down into the railroad cars beneath. This Sandy knew already, for he had watched the sifting of the coal with wondering eyes many times.

Sandy rode back into another tunnel with the man who was running the electric locomotive. This man told him that there were very few mines as fine as this one. In most of them the coal was hauled

in little cars drawn by mules who lived in the mines all their lives and never saw the light of day.

The air in the tunnel was cool and fresh, and Sandy asked his friend how this could be. The man told him that in one of the buildings above ground a great fan pumped air into the mine much as the fan drove the air into the many rooms of the school building to which Sandy went daily. This fresh air is driven down a shaft and into every tunnel of the mine. Inspectors went through the tunnels every day to test the air to see if any deadly gas was present. This they did by means of a light which exploded the gas much as a fire cracker explodes.

Sandy learned many other things about which I have not time to tell now. At the close of the day he was glad to enter the cage and be hauled up to daylight, green trees, singing birds, and the setting

sun.

HELPS TO STUDY

-C. J. Anderson.

Read this story three times, each time for a different purpose: 1. Read it once to get the shift in the scenes, that is, the picture contained in each paragraph or group of paragraphs. Name each picture.

2. Read the story a second time to note the questions which come to mind, as you read, such as, "Where are the largest coal mines in America?" "How do the coal miners live?"

3. Read the story a third time to get an appreciation of what each worker does.

Other Selections: Geographical Readers, CARPENTER; Diggers in the Earth, TAPPAN.

THE STORY OF A STONE

Did you ever gather pebbles on the seashore and wonder what made them so smooth? Did you ever see a rock all scratched and marred and wonder how it got its scratches? Did you ever come upon a boulder in a field, and wonder where it came from? This "Story of a Stone" will set you thinking harder than ever. Find out where it was, what it was once upon a time, and what will become of it.

Once on a time, a great many years ago, in those old days when the great Northwest consisted of a few ragged and treeless hills full of copper and quartz; in the days when it would have been fun to study geography, for there were no capitals or any products, and all the towns were seaports; in fact, an immensely long time ago, there lived in the northeastern part of Wisconsin, not far from the city of Oconto, a little jellyfish.

It was a curious little fellow, about the shape of half an apple and the size of a pin's head; and it floated around in the water and ate little things, and opened and shut its umbrella pretty much as the jellyfishes do now on a sunny day off Nahant Beach, when the tide is coming in. It had a great many little feelers that hung down all around, like so many little snakes, and so it was named Medusa, after a queer woman who lived a long while ago, according to an old story. She wore snakes instead

of hair, and used to turn people into stone images if they dared to make faces at her.

So this little Medusa floated around and opened and shut her umbrella for some time. Then one morning, down among the seaweeds, she laid a whole lot of tiny eggs, transparent as crab-apple jelly, and smaller than the dewdrop on the end of a pine leaf. That was the last thing she did; so she died, and our story henceforth concerns only one of those little eggs.

One day the sun shone down into the water and touched these eggs with life, and a little fellow whom we will call Favosites, because that was his name, woke up inside of the egg and came out into the world. He was only a little piece of floating jelly, shaped like a cartridge pointed at both ends, or like a grain of barley, although very much smaller.

He had a great number of little paddles on his sides. These kept flapping all the time, so that he was constantly in motion. And at night all these little paddles shone with a rich green light, to show him the way through the water. It would have done you good to see them some night when all the little fellows had their lamps burning at once, and every wave as it rose and fell was all aglow with Nature's fireworks, which do not burn the fingers and leave no smell of sulphur.

So the little Favosites kept scuddling along in the water, dodging from one side to the other to avoid the ugly creatures that tried to eat him. There

were crabs and clams of a fashion neither you nor I shall ever see alive. There were huge animals with great eyes, savage jaws like the beak of a snapping turtle and surrounded by long feelers. They sat in the end of a long round shell, shaped like a length of stovepipe, and glowered like an owl in a hollow log, and there were smaller ones that looked like lobsters in a dinner-horn.

But none of these caught the little fellow, else I should not have had this story to tell. At last, having paddled about long enough, Favosites thought of settling in life. So he looked around till he found a flat bit of shell that just suited him. Then he sat down upon it and grew fast.

He did not go to sleep, however, but proceeded to make himself a home. He had no head, but between his shoulders he made an opening which would serve him for mouth and stomach. Then he put a whole row of feelers out, and commenced catching little worms and floating eggs and bits of jelly and bits of lime everything he could get and cramming them into his mouth.

He had a great many curious ways, but the funniest of them all was what he did with the bits of lime. He kept taking them in, and tried to wall himself up inside with them, as a person would stone a well, or as though a man should swallow pebbles and stow them away in his feet and all around under his skin, till he had filled himself all full.