WHAT A BOY DID IN HIS SPARE MOMENTS.
A THIN, awkward boy came to the residence of a celebrated school principal, and asked to see the master. The servant eyed his mean clothes, and, thinking he looked more like a beggar than anything else, told him to go around to the kitchen. He soon appeared at the back door, and repeated his request. "You want a breakfast, more like," said the servant, setting him down to some bread and butter. "Thank you," said the boy. "I should like to see Mr. —, if he can see me." "Some old clothes, maybe, you want; I think he has none to spare," remarked the girl, eyeing his ragged clothes. "May I see Mr. —?" asked the boy, with the most emphatic emphasis on each word. The girl for the first time stopped her work. "Well, he is in the library. If he must be disturbed, he must, I s'pose;" and she whisked off to the room, remarking as she opened the door: "Here's somebody terribly anxious to see you, sir, so I let him in." The professor laid aside his book, and talked with the boy with increasing interest, and soon took down some books and began to give him an examination, which extended even to Greek. Every question was answered promptly and correctly. The professor was amazed, and asked the boy how he had managed, with his apparent poverty, to accumulate such an amount of knowledge. "O, I studied in my spare time," answered the boy brightly, unconscious that he was an example even to the man before him. Here was a boy, a hard-working orphan, almost fitted for college in the spare moments that his companions were wasting. Truly, spare moments are the "gold-dust of time." —Anon.