```When apples are falling and nuts are brown?
```These are the signs that autumn is here.
```What does it mean when the days are short?
```When the leaves are gone and the brooks are dumb?
```When the fields are white with the drifting snows?
```These are the signs that winter has come.
```The old stars set, and the new ones rise,
```And skies that were stormy grow bright and clear;
```Go round and round with the changing year.=
|Grandma Farn is getting old, and has a disease of the eye. She will be seventy at her next birthday. She cannot see to read or to sew as well as she used to. But she has a number of grandchildren.
She calls them her eyes. She says that they must do her seeing for her; and they do, for they are good boys and girls, and love her very much.
The boys are larger and older, and they read aloud in the evening by the light of the lamp. The girls are younger, and cannot read yet; though Lucy, the eldest of the four girls, is now going to school.
The girls have found out a nice way for seeing for grandma. They take a spool of cotton and a paper of large needles. They thread every needle and leave it hanging on the spool. This saves their grandmother's eyes. All she then has to do is to put away the needle when she has used all the cotton. Then she takes another, and another, till the whole twenty-four are used.
Then the girls thread the twenty-four again. In this way they "see for grandma."
Grandma makes clothing for the poor. She can see enough to sew, but not enough, even with glasses, to thread her needle.
|As Uncle Will was going home one noon, he saw a crowd in the street near his house. There were about fifty boys, and they were standing about something that seemed to please them. Their shouts of glee could be heard a long way off.
Uncle Will walked up to find out what was the matter. What did he see but his tame crane, Zip. He was perched on one foot in the midst of the boys, pecking at them right and left. Not a boy could come within six feet of him without feeling the point of his sharp bill.
The boys thought this was great fun. They never had seen so strange a bird. But poor Zip did not enjoy it. When he saw Uncle Will he ran to him, and tucked his head under his arm. He was glad enough to be taken home.