under the overhanging alders she flew back for another. This, too, she brought to the meadow and laid by the side of its brother. One more remained; she must hasten to its rescue; but, alas! just as she neared the blazing barn she saw the nest and the little stork fall through the roof into the fire below. A crowd of spectators had now gathered around, and every heart stood still when the mother stork again plunged into the crackling flames and smoke for her child.

Slowly she arose the third time, with something in her beak; but now she flew slowly and heavily, as if she was weary, and took her way to the meadow brook again, left it with its brother and sister, and the papa flying overhead to guard them; then she went a little distance farther and stretched herself on the ground, cruelly burned.

The little brook rippled and murmured, the breeze blew up from the west, but none of these things had power to ease the sufferings of the brave bird, who had risked her life for her children.

The Burgomaster, passing this way soon after, found the poor creature, and ordered her to be carried tenderly to a house in the village, where she should be nursed and cared for. The best physician in Löwenberg was sent for; the children employed all their spare moments in catching mice and frogs for the invalid; older ones brought soft linen to dress the burns with, while the Burgomaster himself drove up every morning to ask after her.

The stork papa devoted himself to the children, flying over every little while to tell his wife how they were getting along. With all this attention, it was no wonder that she improved rapidly, was soon able to fly again and join her family, who by this time were quite up in the art of flying, and could stand on one foot on a lily-pad, and catch frogs as well as the best.

The good people of Löwenberg said that many a saint had been less brave and heroic, few had shown such patience, and none had been willing to die for others as had this white stork mamma; therefore she should be the patron saint of the village, and she and her children honored for evermore.

ONLY ONE.

BY GEORGE COOPER.

Hundreds of stars in the pretty sky;
Hundreds of shells on the shore together;
Hundreds of birds that go singing by;
Hundreds of bees in the sunny weather.

Hundreds of dew-drops to greet the dawn;
Hundreds of lambs in the purple clover;
Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn;
But only one mother the wide world over!

TIN TOYS AND TEA SETS.

BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING.

In Avenue D, some time ago, I saw a small boy wheeling a barrel along on its edge with so much difficulty that I wondered, what it contained, and looking inside, I saw that it was more than-half full of glistening scraps of metal. I asked him what they were for. "Oh, them's Dexters," he said, as if grieved at my ignorance; and he wheeled his barrel into a great brick factory, five or six stories high, piled about the door of which were large wooden cases addressed to Java, Brazil, Cape Town, and other distant points of the world.

It was in the latter part of April; and though the end of the year was so far off, these packages were being shipped for the Christmas trade in the far-away countries named upon them. They were all filled with toys, and on all the floors of the factory hundreds of busy hands were making playthings for children. That was what the small boy meant by Dexters. The scraps of tin in the barrel bore the convex impression of a horse upon them, and after being trimmed, put together, and painted, they would look not at all unlike the famous trotter by whose name they are known.

Dexters are the most popular of all tin toys, and at this factory in Avenue D they were being made by the thousand for the holiday trade of the coming winter. The spring and summer months are the busiest at the factory, which is quietest when the stores are doing their best trade, in November and December. The seasons with wholesalers and retailers are not at all alike; and when next Christmas the reader visits a toy-shop, he may remember that the goods he sees were principally made in May, June, and August.

The manufacture of tin toys is a new industry in America, and it is so successful that, besides supplying the domestic market, it sends large quantities of goods to all parts of the world, including England and France. When Santa Claus drops in on the children at the Cape of Good Hope, at Penang, at New Zealand, at Buenos Ayres, and at Callao, he will have articles from this factory in Avenue D, New York.

Perhaps some of our readers have advanced so far in the serious business of life that they have forgotten what tin toys are. They are made of tin, of course, but they comprise many different articles, and over a thousand different designs. They are mounted on platforms and wheels, or on wheels alone, and in some of them the revolution of the wheels sets the figures on the platform in motion. An elephant tirelessly somersaults on a trapeze, three dogs ascend and re-ascend a ladder, a little boy chops a tree, a tiger climbs a pole, a girl dances with a skipping-rope, and a circus rider leaps through a hoop. The trainer is larger than the elephant, the axe is larger than the boy, and the tiger balances upon its tail. But this is neither here nor there. As long as the toys are kept in motion, the figures repeat their feats; and if they are not quite life-like, they have the advantage of being unwearying in their exertions.

Tin toys also include locomotives with trains of cars, street cars with papier-maché conductors and drivers, express wagons, hose-carts, ox teams, menagerie wagons, ice carts, milk wagons, "four-in-hands," trucks, stages, steamboats, fire-engines, and magic lanterns.

They are all made much in the same way as the Dexters: the sheet tin is struck by heavy dies, and the impressions made in the metal are cut out, trimmed, and fastened together. Eight dies are used in making a Dexter four inches long, and the set costs from four to six hundred dollars.

In one of the upper stories of the factory we find a young man with a pile of tin plates before him, each about four inches long and three inches wide. He places them one by one on a steel bed-plate, with the counter die upon it, and putting his foot into the stirrup of a leather band by which the die is suspended in an iron frame-work, he strikes out with it, lifting the die, and then allowing it to fall upon the plate, in which it hollows out a very fair representation of a horse. The strain on the man's leg is severe, and if he has nerves, they are pretty well shattered by the cannon-like sound which the die makes in striking.

It must be still worse with the girls who are employed in the same branch of the business; and as the mass of steel comes down like a sledge-hammer every two or three seconds, I pity them as I see how it shakes not only their bodies, but also the beams in the ceiling and the pillars that hold the building together. The hours are long and dreary to them, and when the day is ended, the continuous shock has unfitted them to enjoy the evening. They have no share in the pleasure which the results of their labor will afford. They do not see the toys giving happiness to children; and what they think most about, I fancy, is the number of impressions they can make in a day, for every time the die strikes it is a bit of bread for them.

Their whole attention must be fixed on the machine in its up-and-down motion. A moment's carelessness would cost them their fingers; and we see one girl half of whose hand has been lost by being caught under