long council of war for us to decide to retreat as fast as possible, and taking to the road, we made the best time we could until we came to the top of a little hill. Here we mustered up courage to stop and look behind us. But there was the bear coming right up the road after us. We did not look back a second time, you may be sure, and in a very few moments we burst into my father's kitchen, and when we could get breath, exclaimed: "A b—a bear! A great big black bear chased us, and he's coming right up here!"

All that night we dreamed of bears. The cows did not come home, nor did the bear come after us, as we expected he would; but when father went down the next morning, he found the bear's tracks in the road, and following them up, he found where the old fellow had entered the corn field and taken his supper. Shortly afterward he was shot near the same place.

CAMEOS.

BY BARNET PHILLIPS.

ersonal adornment was the earliest motive that led primitive man to cultivate other arts than those which were necessary to his existence. Just as soon as he had killed such wild animals as were dangerous, or were wanted for food, he probably set about carving some kind of design on his weapons. After a while, when he found more time, he went straight away to fashioning ornaments for his own person. If you should go to the Museum of Natural History in New York city, where the rude implements of men who lived many thousands of years ago are to be found, you will see many such early ornaments. Some of these ornaments are of the very roughest and coarsest kind, and would not be considered either pretty or becoming to-day. Early man took a small stone, and with infinite trouble bored a hole through it with a flint; then he strung it on a shred of sinew, and wore it around his neck. He was probably very selfish about this simple ornament, and it is quite likely that many years passed before he made any such beads for his wife, or allowed her to wear them.

Gradually, however, man's artistic tastes were awakened, and he first cut the sides of the soft stones, then polished them, though many thousands of years passed before he learned how to engrave on hard stones. Gem-engraving is so old, however, that it is difficult to give it a date. You will find very often in collections a hard stone, which has something engraved on it, belonging to a very ancient period; but the material was fashioned into some form or other by people who had lived many centuries before. Cameo-cutting came after gem-engraving, and those who are learned in such matters tell us that there were cameos made as early as 162 years before Christ.

Now what is a cameo? It may be a portrait, or a group of figures, or any design, cut on a hard material, where the work executed in relief, or the part which stands out, is of a different color from the ground. In order, then, to make a cameo you must have some hard substance composed of different layers. Such stones are called banded stones. There are many minerals, such as the onyx, the carnelian, or sard, where there are two layers of the same substance one on top of the other, but of different colors. The upper crust may be pure white or a pale fawn-color, and the lower layer red, or olive, or black. Then the contrast is very handsome. In order to get the materials on which cameos were to be engraved, the Greeks and Romans travelled a great distance, even as far as India. It is believed that cameo-cutting was at its greatest state of perfection in the second century of the Christian era, when the Roman lapidaries, as workers in precious stones are called, carried on their work.

But a cameo need not be made of stone, for some of the finest that have come down to us were fashioned by the Romans by cutting layers of glass of different colors. It may seem strange to young readers to be told that although to-day we are very perfect in glass-making, there are a great many things the Romans could have taught us in this art. Now the reason why they were so skilled in glass manufacture was because they used glass as a substitute for porcelain, which was not then invented. The illustration which accompanies this article represents a very fine cameo designed by a very great English artist, whose name was John Flaxman. This cameo, which was cast, was made of white and blue porcelain, and was probably intended as a decoration for one of those beautiful urns which Wedgwood, the famous potter, manufactured in England almost a hundred years ago.

To-day a great many cameos are made, but not out of hard stones. The shell of the conch, found in Florida and the West Indies, is the material used. The white surface is cut into the figure and left. The under layer of the shell, or the ground, which is of a brownish hue when polished, gives that contrast which a cameo should have. We do not take as much trouble to make a cameo as did the ancients. They cut the stone with tiny drills, the points of which are believed to have been diamonds. The shell cameo being much softer, can be scraped or cut with small chisels. Of the old cameos there are two famous ones, one cut on an agate, the other on an onyx. Nothing in modern art is as fine, and for the one on the onyx, which is known as the Vienna gem, as much as 12,000 gold ducats was paid by the Emperor Rudolph in the sixteenth century. By the study of ancient cameos a great deal is learned, for they show us the actual pictures of the dress and costumes of people who lived more than 1800 years ago. But more than that: on some of these cameos we have the exact likenesses of great personages, who as Roman Emperors once ruled the world. In ancient times cameos were used, just as they are to-day, as ornaments, only the Greeks and Romans, men and women, wore them set in gold on their shoulders, as they held together the folds of their flowing draperies.

In the United States there are quite a number of cameo-makers, who cut good likenesses on shells; but the great art which existed in the time of Augustus has passed away.

TIM AND TIP;[1]

OR, THE ADVENTURES OF A BOY AND A DOG.

BY JAMES OTIS,

AUTHOR OF "TOBY TYLER," ETC.

Chapter XII.

TIP'S DANGER.

The work of preparing the dinner had occupied so much time that it was nearly the regular hour for supper before the last boy arose from the lowly table, and not one of them had any desire to fish or hunt. They sat around the fire, dodging the smoke as best they could, until the setting sun warned them that they must get their bedroom work done at once, or be obliged to do it in the dark.

This task was remarkably simple; it consisted in each boy finding his blanket, wrapping himself in it, and lying on the ground, all in a row, like herrings in a box.

Nor did they wait very long for slumber to visit their eyelids, for in ten minutes after they were ready it came to all, even to Tip, who had curled himself up snugly under Tim's arm.

Had any of the party been experienced in the sport of "camping out," they would have studied the signs in the sky for the purpose of learning what might have been expected of the weather; but as it was, they had all laid themselves down to sleep without a thought that the dark clouds which had begun to gather in the sky were evidences of a