STORY OF A BIRDS NEST. How gentle and how loving Should all our actions be! How tender and how truthful Ev'ry spoken word to thee! STORY OF A BIRD'S NEST. ID you ever, dear children, watch the birds in spring-time ' building their pretty nests; and did you think how won- derful it was that they should know how to make so nice a little home from such things as they pick up here and there? How smooth and beautiful they make the inside of their nests, so as to form a soft bed for their eggs and little birdies ! . Do you suppose that your fingers, which are so skilful about many things, could form as nice a nest as the little birds can, with their slender beaks? If you think that perhaps they might, just try it some day, and see if you can weave together twigs and hair, with perhaps some bits of wool or cotton, into a little rounded nest as beautiful as that which a pair of robins would make! Even if you should succeed in making some- thing to look like a nest, you would be obliged to try a number of times first, and you would probably make many mistakes, and have to take your work into pieces and begin anew again and again before it would suit you. Not so with the birds. They never make mistakes, and they are not even obliged to think how to make their pretty homes, because God has given them what is called instinct. In other words, He teaches every little bird how to build just the kind of nest best fitted for its use. I will tell you a true story of a pair of golden orioles that many years ago built a nest in an elm-tree so near a farm-house that the children who lived there could watch them every day 34