Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

This new life is likely to be

Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln at length is made
Sober with work, and silent with care;
Off is his holiday garment laid,

Half forgotten that merry air:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,

Spink, spank, spink;

Nobody knows but my mate and I
Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
Chee, chee, chee.

Summer wanes; the children are grown;
Fun and frolic no more he knows;
Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone;
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,

Spink, spank, spink,

When you can pipe that merry old strain,
Robert of Lincoln, come back again.

Chee, chee, chee.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

braggart

cowardly

humdrum

Let us suppose that it is summer, and that you are visiting a Swedish family in the country. After breakfast the boys take you out to the pasture, and the horses and colts come running to you, stretch their necks over the fence, and rub their noses on your shoulder. The sheep say, "Good morning!" by rubbing their thick, woolly sides against you, and the great oxen lying in the

shade give you a friendly wink now and again with their

big, brown eyes.

Every animal is tame and gentle; and you do not have to wonder long why this is So, for you find that in Sweden the boys and girls never throw stones at beast or bird, and never frighten or torment them in any way. Instead, they feed and pet them, and make much of them.

After supper the sun is still high in the heavens, and even at nine o'clock, when you go to bed, it is shining brightly as it swings low along the horizon.

If you wake up at midnight and go to the window, you behold the whole northern sky glowing with red and yellow hues. Whether it is sunset or sunrise it is hard to say, for the heavens shine all through the short summer nights.

Indeed, were you to travel to the north of Sweden, you would behold the sun shining upon you directly over the north pole at midnight, and you might remain a month without once seeing it set beneath the horizon. It would take too long here to tell you the reason of this, but it is all explained in your geography.

On midsummer's eve, which in Sweden is the twentythird of June, all the boys and girls drive into the nearest village, and you will surely go with them. You drive in a long hay cart thickly trimmed with the bright green boughs of the birch. The horses are decked out with birch too, and the driver sits in a green birch bower. How jolly it

is driving along the pretty country lanes, twenty or thirty of you young folks on the hay, -peeping out through the boughs and laughing and singing!

You drive up to the village green. Here are youths and maidens in plenty. You wonder where they all could have come from in such a sparsely settled country.

In the middle of the square you see a maypole, sixty feet high. This is trimmed with verdant birch leaves, while garlands and wreaths of flowers hang from its cross trees. The blue and yellow flag of Sweden is flying from the top.

The boys and girls are dancing round the maypole. They are happy and thankful for the glorious summer time, the earth all green again, the long days and the bright nights with no darkness anywhere. So they dance through the night, which is no night after allonly a beautiful, luminous twilight that fills the short space between sunset and sunrise.

Thus have their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers danced before them on this same bright eve for hundreds and hundreds of yearsyes, so far back in time that history does not know when the custom began.

If you like winter, you will surely like to stay in Sweden. Here are cold, snow, and ice enough to satisfy anybody. So long the winter is, too! Four or five months of it at least, you may be sure of.

Here you can enjoy all your winter sports to perfection ; build snow forts and snow men, snowball your comrades, coast and skate, go on sleigh rides, or skim the frozen lakes on ice yachts.

There are other winter sports. You can learn to slip over the untrodden snow fields and through the deep, dark northern forests on "skidor," or "skees" as they are sometimes called. These skidor, or snow skates, are thin straps of wood six to nine feet long, about four inches in width, and turned up at the front end like the runners of a sled.

Your feet are bound to the middle of them in such a way that while the toes and ball of the foot are fast, the heel is free to move up and down. With a staff in your hand to help you up the hills and aid you in steering down them, you may glide over the open country at the rate of six or eight miles an hour.

Then the "spark stotting," or "kicker," -I know you will like that. It is the lightest sort of frame sled. Two upright standards rise some three feet high from the back end of the framework, and behind these the runners extend backward five or six feet.

You grasp the tops of the standards, one with each hand, stand on one foot on one of the runners, and with your disengaged foot kick your kicker and yourself over the hard-trodden snow highways as fast as an ordinary horse jogs along.