Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/203

 thighbone extends down two-thirds of his leg, points to a very solid-looking speckled rainbow with one hand, and with the other urges forward his pupil to make a closer examination.

Then we have a picture of a scene on the ice, whereon one boy has come a cropper. Now, the identity of that boy is rather doubtful. He can scarcely be the good boy who wouldn't play truant to go and slide, or he wouldn't have come a cropper, even had he been on the ice at all. On the other hand, he can't be the bad boy who insisted on doing these wicked things, or he would have fallen clean through the ice and been drowned. Perhaps he is a reformed bad boy who came on the ice to warn the others. This seems more likely, since he appears to have only one leg; he probably lost the other through climbing after birds' nests on Sunday, or something of that sort, and then reformed. One can't get much fun, you know, with only one leg left, so may as well reform as not.

In the early days an artist often had to draw a thing which he had never seen. We have here the effort of one of these gentlemen who evidently had never seen an elephant, and built the face up as well as he could from a human standpoint, with the trunk on the chin. We won't be personal, but we believe we have seen a portrait very like this in some of the papers.

We have, in the next picture, an opportunity of inspecting the interior of a boys' school of the last century end. Note the little three-cornered hats hung above the scholars' heads, and the portentous array of heavy books over the head of the learned master, in his wig and gown. He opens his palm as though for the benefit of a small boy's ears, but, as there is no small boy sufficiently near it, perhaps he is only indulging in the pleasures of anticipation. The view from the window is particularly interesting. The three regular sugar-loat trees, of the herring-bone species, growing exactly to the same height, and each exactly filling the width of one window-pane in the vision, without encroaching upon the others, offer a beautiful lesson in order and harmony among neighbours.

A specimen of quite a different class is seen in the representation of Polyphemus, at the entrance to his cave, with cloak, staff, and Pandean pipes. The bold, free drawing of the King of the Cyclops is of the school of Blake, but there are points in the