“Now go ahead, Jimmy,” cried out Jacob Lander.

“Don’t ask too hard questions.”

Jimmy immediately began on his hobby—Bible questions.

“Who made the ark?”

“Noah,” answered a half-dozen voices.

“Who told him to make the ark?”

“God,” replied several.

“What for did God want he should make the ark?”

There was a pause; no one answered. It was one of Jacob Lander’s hard questions, that James should have avoided. After waiting in vain for an answer, he answered it himself.

“To save his self and family in.”

“Save from what?” cried out Jacob.

“From the flood,” replied James.

“Who was the oldest man?” James continued.

“Methusaleh,” several answered.

“How old was he?”

Nobody could tell, and so James told them.

“Who was the meekest man?”

“Moses,” was the prompt answer.

“Who had a coat of many colours?”

“Joseph,” equally prompt.

“Who was swallowed in the Red Sea?”

Nobody replied. He told.

And thus, for ten or fifteen minutes, this child of not quite four years interrogated the scholars around him, presenting one of the most marvellous scenes on record, whether in wilderness or city. From his earliest years his memory was very remarkable, embracing and retaining stories, facts, and whatever he heard, with unusual accuracy. He acquired very much information in school by listening to the recitations of other and older pupils. Nothing was more common during his first term at school, than for him to repeat at home something he had learned from the recitations of older scholars. Then, too, nothing escaped his notice. His faculty of observation was ever on the alert. Language, manners, apparel, methods of work, conversation, almost everything attracted his attention; so that he was ever surprising friends, from his childhood, by the amount of information he possessed.

He was a great imitator, too. Children differ very much in this regard. James was one in whom this faculty appeared to be large by inheritance. It was encouraging to behave well in his presence, it was