COMMERCE

All civilized countries depend upon trade and commerce. No man tries to make everything he uses. If he were to spend his time in making his own hats, and chairs, and carpets, and houses, he would be of little use in the world. 5 In fact, no town and no country can produce everything essential to life without a waste of time and labor.

One country produces much gold, another tin and iron, a third fruit and spices. By exchange each country is provided with what it needs of these things. America, 10 with its variety of climate and its wide stretch of territory,

can produce more, perhaps, than any other country in the world. Yet Americans are glad to send across the sea for many things which make life easy and pleasant.

Buying and selling at home is trade. Buying and sell15 ing when carried on with people of other lands is called commerce. When we send goods out of the country, we export them. When we bring goods into the country, we import them.

We depend upon one another, not only in our homes 20 and in small ways, but in the great affairs of life.

When a nation refuses to share and to help in the world's work, it loses its own power and importance.

Selected.

TANGLEWOOD PLAY ROOM

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

NOTE. This selection, and the story of Pandora to which it refers, may be found in "A Wonder Book," the companion volume to “ Tanglewood Tales."

The golden days of October passed away, as so many other Octobers have, and brown November likewise, and the greater part of chill December too. At last came merry Christmas, and Eustace Bright along with it, making it all the merrier by his presence. And the day after his arrival from college there came a mighty snowstorm. Up to this time the winter had held back and had given 10 us a good many mild days, which were like smiles upon its wrinkled visage.

The grass had kept itself green in sheltered places, such as the nooks of southern hill slopes and along the lee of the stone fences. It was but a week or two ago, and 15 since the beginning of the month, that the children had found a dandelion in bloom on the margin of Shadow Brook, where it glides out of the dell.

But no more green grass and dandelions now. This was such a snowstorm! Twenty miles of it might have 20 been visible at once, between the windows of Tanglewood and the dome of Taconic, had it been possible to see so

far among the eddying drifts that whitened all the atmosphere. It seemed as if the hills were giants, and were flinging monstrous handfuls of snow at one another in their enormous sport.

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5 So thick were the fluttering snowflakes that even the trees midway down the valley were hidden by them the greater part of the time. Sometimes, it is true, the little prisoners of Tanglewood could discern a dim outline of Monument Mountain, and the smooth whiteness of the 10 frozen lake at its base, and the black or gray tracts of woodland in the nearer landscape. But these were merely peeps through the tempest.

Nevertheless the children rejoiced greatly in the snowstorm. They had already made acquaintance with it by 15 tumbling heels over head into its highest drifts and flinging snow at one another, as we have just fancied the Berkshire mountains to be doing. And now they had come back to their spacious play room, which was as big as the great drawing-room, and was lumbered with all 20 sorts of playthings, large and small.

The biggest was a rocking-horse that looked like a real pony; and there was a whole family of wooden, waxen, plaster, and china dolls, besides rag babies; and blocks enough to build Bunker Hill Monument, and ninepins and 25 balls, and humming tops, and battledoors, and grace sticks,

and skipping ropes, and more of such valuable property than I could tell of in a printed page.

But the children liked the snowstorm better than them all. It suggested so many brisk enjoyments for to-morrow and all the remainder of the winter. The sleigh ride; the 5 slides down hill into the valley; the snow images that

were to be shaped out; the snow fortresses that were to be built; and the snowballing to be carried on!

So the little folks blessed the snowstorm, and were glad to see it come thicker and thicker, and watched hopefully 10 the long drift that was piling itself up in the avenue, and was already higher than any of their heads.

"Why, we shall be blocked up till spring!" cried they with the hugest delight. "What a pity that the house is

too high to be quite covered up! The little red house down yonder will be buried up to its eaves."

"You silly children! what do you want of more snow?" asked Eustace, who, tired of some novel that he was skim5 ming through, had strolled into the play room. "It has done mischief enough already by spoiling the only skating that I could hope for through the winter. We shall see nothing more of the lake till April; and this was to have been my first day upon it! Don't you pity me, 10 Primrose?"

"Oh, to be sure!" answered Primrose, laughing. "But, for your comfort, we will listen to another of your old stories, such as you told us under the porch and down in the hollow by Shadow Brook. Perhaps I shall like 15 them better now, when there is nothing to do, than while there were nuts to be gathered and beautiful weather to enjoy."

Hereupon Periwinkle, Clover, Sweet Fern, and as many others of the little fraternity and cousinhood as were 20 still at Tanglewood, gathered about Eustace and earnestly besought him for a story. The student yawned, stretched himself, and then, to the vast admiration of the small people, skipped three times back and forth over the top of a chair, in order, as he explained to them, to set his 25 wits in motion.