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A GAME OF ARCHERY.
July 14th.
This is the National Fete day of France.

In Nagasaki Harbor, all the ships are adorned with flags, and salutes are fired in our honor.
Alas! All day long, I can not help thinking of that last fourteenth of July, spent in the deep calm and quiet of my old home, the door shut against all intruders, while the gay crowd roared outside; there I had remained till evening, seated on a bench, shaded by an arbor covered with honeysuckle, where, in the bygone days of my childhood's summers, I used to settle myself with my copybooks and pretend to learn my lessons.
Oh, those days when I was supposed to learn my lessons! How my thoughts used to rove--what voyages, what distant lands, what tropical forests did I not behold in my dreams! At that time, near the garden-bench, in some of the crevices in the stone wall, dwelt many a big, ugly, black spider always on the alert, peeping out of his nook ready to pounce upon any giddy fly or wandering centipede.

One of my amusements consisted in tickling the spiders gently, very gently, with a blade of grass or a cherry-stalk in their webs.

Mystified, they would rush out, fancying they had to deal with some sort of prey, while I would rapidly draw back my hand in disgust.