GATHERING WALNUTS
Watnut trees are 
generally tall and stately, and the fruit is often found in the best clusters on the topmost boughs, where it would be impossible to reach them by means of ladders; so they take long poles and knock them off in the manner you see.
“Now why do you flog the poor walnut tree so,
That its leaves and green branches lie scatter’d below?
Hark! it murmurs complaints to the whispering breeze,
And shakes its green head at hard blows such as these.”
“O dear little lady, you don’t understand,
I cannot pluck fruit at this height with my hand,
Unless I’d long arms, reaching high as the tree;
I should laugh in my sleeve, if that ever should be.”
“So I take a long stick the ripe walnuts to gain,
Without it you’d have few to crack, it is plain:
The tree bears the buffets, forgets and forgives,
And still does its duty each year that it lives.
Do you do the same, little lady, I pray,
Lest when the tree whispers next time it should say,
Whilst it shakes its green head in the way that you see,
There goes a young girl with less sense than a tree!”
THE DOVECOT
This is a little house, as you see, made to shelter pigeons. It is placed on a tall post and set in the water, very prudently, to prevent naughty boys from climbing up and robbing it. Pigeons, although tamed by man to a great degree, yet retain the free exercise of their wings; and they are, in this respect, unlike common fowls, and ducks and geese, which can scarcely fly across a field. Pigeons, or Doves, as they are called, are most beautiful and interesting birds, mild and inoffensive: they are in Scripture named to represent gentleness and innocence.
The power of flight possessed by these birds, is truly wonderful, as is their unaccountable sagacity in finding their way home, over lands and seas, whither they had never been borne before. So, when persons have gone abroad, to France or Holland, for instance, they have taken a tame pigeon with them in a basket, and, having arrived, perhaps at Paris or Amsterdam, they have tied a letter under the wing of the pigeon, and then let it fly. The bird has generally returned quite safe in a few hours!