SCENE IN HOLLAND.

THESE are low flat meadows in Holland, with cattle grazing, and geese quacking, and a dull grey sky overhead. It is just such a scene as many of the great Dutch landscape painters loved to paint, for although you perhaps may not see much beauty in it, yet those great painters saw it with artists' eyes, and made grand pictures out of their low fields, fat cattle, and ditch water.

Holland is a very peculiar country. It is indeed, unlike any other country in the world, for the land is below the water, and the water has to be kept from flooding it by dykes, pumps, and other means. There are so many canals that the land is completely netted over with them. One of the provinces of Holland had for its emblem a Lion struggling in the water, with the motto "I strive, and I keep my head above water;" a very appropriate motto, for it is only by constant exertion that Holland is kept from drowning.

THE WOOD-CUTTERS.

THESE good wood-cutters have been out all day long in the forest felling the large trees and cutting down brushwood to light the fires in winter-time, and now they are tying up large bundles of bavins before going home. Those tall straight poles you see piled up together are put aside for hop-poles, because they are so tall and slender. But the hardest work the wood-cutter has is in felling the great oaks, the giants of the forest, as they have been called. He drives first one wedge into the big trunk, and then another, hitting harder and harder time, until the mighty tree groans as if it were in pain, and at last falls with a dreadful crash, and all the little birds who have made their nests in it fall with it, and their nests are dashed to pieces, and the eggs broken, and great is the sorrow around. Oh, it is sad to see a noble tree fall beneath the axe of the wood-cutter !

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A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

T

Ir is Christmas Eve, and the village Carol-singers are singing before the door of a grand old Elizabethan mansion. This is the carol they are singing—

"The angels, the angels,
Are singing above
The story, the story
Of Jesus' great love.

And children and children
Are singing on earth,
The same wondrous story
Of Christ's lowly birth.

At midnight, at midnight,
The Christ Child was born,
Who turned by His love
Earth's night into morn."