Some of you may think this representation of the sad case we should be in, rather exaggerated. "We should not be such helpless creatures," you may perhaps say. "Why, there is a story I have seen about a French woman, who was destitute of this instrument and some others, and yet she could do a great many sorts of work, and even write, draw and sew." Yes, and the story was undoubtedly true. I have heard stories like it before. I have heard of a man, in the same condition, who could write with his breast. His pen was fastened to a girdle, and then he could dip it in the ink, and write very well with it.

But these are extraordinary cases, in which nature is permitted, for some reason which we cannot discover, to depart from her established laws. Such occurrences, however, no more prove that people, constituted as we are, could. live upon this earth without the aid of their hands, than the existence among his fellow creatures of a person afflicted with blindness, proves that all could get along well without the use of their eye-sight. The persons I have mentioned could not have made the pens and pencils to write and draw with, nor the needles

to sew with; nor could the man have placed the pen in his girdle. And there are a thousand other necessary things which they could not do.

The human tongue is spoken of by an inspired writer as being a "little member," yet boasting great things. So this small member of the frame which we are talking of is a "little" affair, but great things depend upon it. It is a sort of connecting link, that, if used, serves to bind the human soul to the habitation it occupies, for a few years—seldom more than a hundred. Without it, or neglecting to use it, our lives, as a race, must soon terminate. "He that will not work, neither shall he eat," is a divine law; and we could not work much without the aid of this beautiful piece of divine mechanism.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CUPOLA.

The cranium. Bones of the face and jaws. The teeth. Growth of the teeth. Structure of the teeth.

of the teeth.

Uses

Bones of the ear. Bone of the throat.

WE come now to the cupola, by which I mean the skull, which is placed on the top of the great post. I have already told you that seven of the twenty-four pieces which form that post are situated above the second story of the building, and unite the skull to the trunk. You will observe the open chamber at the upper part, and you may also see the places for doors and windows.

I must stop here long enough to say that_ unlike what is seen in ordinary dwellings-the doors and windows of the house I live in are in the cupola: there is not one door in either the first or second story. The windows, and some of the doors, are placed in front-the rest of the doors at the sides. The doors and windows themselves, as you know, properly belong to the covering; they will therefore be described under that head.

I have called the mouth and ears and nostrils doors, to keep up the metaphor which pervades the work; but the eyes may, with the greatest propriety, be regarded as windows. All sound, smell and taste come to us through these passages, and the machinery or organs near and within them: why then may they not properly be considered as doors?

THE CRANIUM.-At the beginning of this chapter, I showed you a picture of the bones of the whole head. Now if the bones of the face and neck were taken quite away, and nothing left but the hollow brain-case, (cranium,) the appearance would be very different.

Here is a front view of a skull from which the bones below have thus been removed.

You see, in front, the top of the cavity or socket for each of the two eyes; and on one side, the place where the ear should be, in the living person. This brain-case is composed of eight bones, most of which are closely united by a rough edge, like that of a saw, the notches of which shut into each other as exactly as saw teeth would, and form what may be called seams. These seams are by anatomists called sutures, and are nine or ten in number.

One of the most important bones of the skull, or brain-pan, is that which stretches across the whole forehead, and is called the os

frontis, or frontal bone. Another, across the