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��Reuben Tracy s Vacation Trips.
��which gave Star Island its natural grandeur. They would have liked to have remained there all of the after- noon, to have enjoyed the waves as they dashed up over the rocks ; but they only stopped long enough to find Miss Underhill's Chair, the name of a large rock, on which Frank read aloud an inscription stating the fact, that, in 1848, on that spot, Miss Under- hill, a loved missionary teaclier, was sitting, when a great wave came and washed her away. Miss De Severn said that her body was found a week later at York Beach, where the tide had left it.
On their way back to the hotel they noticed some willows and Avild roses, enclosed in a wooden fence, wherein Mrs. Tracy said would be found the graves of three little children of a mis- sionary who once lived upon the island ; whereupon the boys searched until they found the three following inscriptions : " Jessie," two years, " Millie," four years, and "Mittie," seven years old. Under the name of Mittie they said was inscribed : I don't want to die, but I '11 do just as Jesus wants me to."
Mrs. Tracy found herself looking back tenderly to this sacred spot, as she followed the boys to the other side of the Oceanic to see the ruins of the old Fort, which Reuben said had been use- ful before the Revolutionary War.
��On their way to the steamer, which was to leave in a few minutes, tiiey stepped into a small graveyard of dark stones, of which Mrs. Tracy said all but one were inscribed with the name of Caswell.
Soon they were on the steamer, bound for Portsmouth, then on the cars for Salem, where they arrived home in time for supper. They had seen what they went to see, and Reuben now very well knew what an island was. Hereafter, geography and history would be more real to him. On the following Monday, Frank was telling in his home all that he had seen, thus inspiring a larger circle with a desire to see and to know, and Rueben was in his schoolroom ready to begin another year's school work. His teacher was glad to see that he certainly would be a more interest- ing pupil for his inteUigent vacation rambles, and silently wished that more mothers would do what Ms mother has done.
As for Mrs. Tracy, she not only de- cided to interest herself in the studies of her boy more than she had done in the past, but she determined to prepare the way for some little historic excursion for every vacation which her son should have. Another summer should bring Concord, surely, and perhaps Plymouth too.
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