Title: Harper's Round Table, December 15, 1896
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Harper's Round Table, December 15, 1896" ***


[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]

Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.

       *       *       *       *       *

PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1896. FIVE CENTS A
COPY.

VOL. XVIII.--NO. 894. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.

       *       *       *       *       *



[Illustration]

THE MYSTERY OF THE SWAMP.

BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.


I.

Once upon a time there lived on a large plantation in Middle Georgia a
boy who was known as Little Crotchet. It was a very queer name, to be
sure, but it seemed to fit the lad to a T. When he was a wee bit of a
chap he fell seriously ill, and when, many weeks afterwards, the doctors
said the worst was over, it was found that he had lost the use of his
legs, and that he would never be able to run about and play as other
children do. When he was told about this he laughed, and said he had
known all along that he would never be able to run about on his feet
again; but he had plans of his own, and he told his father that he
wanted a pair of crutches made.

"But you can't use them, my son," said his father.

"Anyhow, I can try," insisted the lad.

The doctors were told of his desire, and these wise men put their heads
together.

"It is a crotchet," they declared, "but it will be no harm for him to
try."

"It is a little crotchet," said his mother, "and he shall have the
crutches."

Thus it came about that the lad got both his name and his crutches, for
his father insisted on calling him Little Crotchet after that, and he
also insisted on sending all the way to Philadelphia for the crutches.
They seemed to be a long time in coming, for in those days they had to
be brought to Charleston in a sailing-vessel, and then sent by way of
Augusta in a stage-coach; but when they came they were very welcome, for
Little Crotchet had been inquiring for them every day in the week, and
Sunday too. And yet when they came, strange to say, he seemed to have
lost his interest in them. His mother brought them in joyously, but
there was not even a glad smile on the lad's face. He looked at them
gravely, weighed them in his hands, laid them across the foot of the
bed, and then turned his head on his pillow, as if he wanted to go to
sleep. His mother was surprised, and not a little hurt, as mothers will
be when they do not understand their children; but she respected his
wishes, darkened the room, kissed the boy, and closed the door gently.

When everything was still, Little Crotchet sat up in bed, seized his
crutches, and proceeded to try them. He did this every day for a week,
and at the end of that time surprised everybody in the house, and on the
place as well, by marching out on his crutches, and going from room to
room without so much as touching his feet to the floor. It seemed to be
a most wonderful feat to perform, and so it was; but Providence, in
depriving the lad of the use of his legs, had correspondingly
strengthened the muscles of his chest and arms, so that within a month
he could use his crutches almost as nimbly and quite as safely as other
boys use their feet. He could go up stairs and down stairs and walk
about the place with as much ease apparently as those not afflicted, and
it was not strange that the negroes regarded the performance with wonder
akin to awe, declaring among themselves that their young master was
upheld and supported by "de sperits."

And indeed it was a queer sight to see the frail lad going boldly about
on crutches, his feet not touching the ground. The sight seemed to make
the pet name of Little Crotchet more appropriate than ever. So his name
stuck to him, even after he got his gray pony, and became a familiar
figure in town and in country, as he went galloping about, his crutches
strapped to the saddle, and dangling as gayly as the sword of some fine
general. Thus it came to pass that no one was surprised when Little
Crotchet went cantering along, his gray pony snorting fiercely, and
seeming never to tire. Early or late, whenever the neighbors heard the
short sharp snort of the gray pony and the rattling of the crutches,
they would turn to one another and say, "Little Crotchet!" and that
would be explanation enough. There seemed to be some sort of
understanding between him and his gray pony.

Anybody could ride the gray pony in the pasture or in the grove around
the house, but when it came to going out by the big gate, that was
another matter. He could neither be led nor driven beyond that boundary
by any one except Little Crotchet. It was the same when it came to
crossing water. The gray pony would not cross over the smallest running
brook for any one but Little Crotchet; but with the lad on his back he
would plunge into the deepest stream, and, if need be, swim across it.
All this deepened and confirmed the idea in the minds of the negroes
that Little Crotchet was upheld and protected by "de sperits." They had
heard him talking to the gray pony, and they had heard the gray pony
whinny in reply. They had seen the gray pony with their little master on
his back go gladly out at the big gate and rush with a snort through the
plantation creek--a bold and at times a dangerous stream. Seeing these
things, and knowing the temper of the pony, they had no trouble in
coming to the conclusion that something supernatural was behind it all.


II.

Thus it happened that Little Crotchet and his gray pony were pretty well
known through all the country-side, for it seemed that he was never
tired of riding, and that the pony was never tired of going. What was
the rider's errand? Nobody knew. Why should he go skimming along the red
road at day dawn? And why should he come whirling back at dusk--a red
cloud of dust rising beneath the gray pony's feet? Nobody could tell.

This was almost as much of a puzzle to some of the whites as it was to
the negroes; but this mystery, if it could be called such, was soon
eclipsed by a phenomenon that worried some of the wisest dwellers in
that region. This phenomenon, apparently very simple, began to manifest
itself in early fall, and continued all through that season and during
the winter and on through the spring, until warm weather set in. It was
in the shape of a thin column of blue smoke that could be seen on any
clear morning or late afternoon rising from the centre of Spivey's
Canebrake. This place was called a canebrake because a thick, almost
impenetrable, growth of canes fringed the edge of a mile-wide basin
lying between the bluffs of the Oconee River and the uplands beyond.
Instead of being a canebrake, it was a vast swamp, the site of cool but
apparently stagnant ponds and of treacherous quagmires, in which cows,
and even horses, had been known to disappear and perish. The cowitch
grew there, and the yellow plumes of the poison-oak vine glittered like
small torches. There, too, the thunderwood tree exuded its poisonous
milk, and long serpentlike vines wound themselves around and through the
trees and helped to shut out the sunlight. It was a swamp, and a very
dismal one. The night birds gathered there to sleep during the day, and
all sorts of creatures that shunned the sunlight or hated man found a
refuge there. If the negroes had made paths through its recesses to
enable them to avoid the patrol, nobody knew it but themselves.

Why, then, should a thin but steady stream of blue smoke be constantly
rising upwards from the centre of Spivey's Canebrake? This was a mystery
to those who first discovered it, and it soon grew to be a neighborhood
mystery. During the summer the smoke could not be seen, but in the fall
and winter its small thin volume went curling upward continually. Little
Crotchet often watched it from the brow of Turner's Hill, the highest
part of the uplands. Early in the morning or late in the afternoon the
vapor would rise from the Oconee; but the vapor was white and heavy, and
was blown about by the wind, while the smoke in the swamp was blue and
thin, and rose straight in the air above the tops of the trees in spite
of the wayward winds.

Once when Little Crotchet was sitting on his pony watching the blue
smoke rise from the swamp he saw two of the neighbor farmers coming
along the highway. They stopped and shook hands with the lad, and then
turned to watch the thin stream of blue smoke. The morning was clear and
still, and the smoke rose straight in the air, until it seemed to mingle
with the upper blue. The two farmers were father and son--Jonathan
Gadsby and his son Ben. They were both very well acquainted with Little
Crotchet--as, indeed, everybody in the county was--and he was so bright
and queer that they stood somewhat in awe of him.

"I reckin if I had a pony that wasn't afeard of nothin' I'd go right
straight and find out where that fire is and what it is," remarked Ben
Gadsby.

This stirred his father's ire apparently. "Why, Benjamin! Why, what on
the face of the earth do you mean? Ride into that swamp! Why, you must
have lost what little sense you had when you was born! I remember, jest
as well as if it was day before yesterday, when Uncle Jimmy Cosby's red
steer got in that swamp, and we couldn't git him out. Git him out, did I
say? We couldn't even git nigh him. We could hear him beller, but we
never got where we could see ha'r nor hide of him. If I was thirty years
younger I'd take my foot in my hand and wade in there and see where the
smoke comes from."

Little Crotchet laughed. "If I had two good legs," said he, "I'd soon
see what the trouble is."

This awoke Ben Gadsby's ambition. "I believe I'll go in there and see
where the fire is."

"Fire!" exclaimed old Mr. Gadsby, with some irritation. "Who said
anything about fire? What living and moving creature could build a fire
in that thicket? I'd like mighty well to lay my eyes on him."

"Well," said Ben Gadsby, "where you see smoke there's obliged to be
fire. I've heard you say that yourself."

"Me?" exclaimed Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, with a show of alarm in the midst
of his indignation. "Did I say that? Well, it was when I wasn't so much
as thinking that my two eyes were my own. What about foxfire? Suppose
that some quagmire or other in that there swamp has gone and got up a
ruction on its own hook? Smoke without fire? Why, I've seed it many a
time. And maybe that smoke comes from an eruption in the ground. What
then? Who's going to know where the fire is?"

Little Crotchet laughed, but Ben Gadsby put on a very bold front.
"Well," said he, "I can find bee-trees, and I'll find where that fire
is."

"Well, sir," remarked Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, looking at his son with an
air of pride, "find out where the smoke comes from, and we'll not expect
you to see the fire."

"I wish I could go with you," said Little Crotchet.

"I don't need any company," replied Ben Gadsby. "I've done made up my
mind, and I'm a-going to show the folks around here that where there's
so much smoke there's obliged to be some fire."

The young man, knowing that he had some warm work before him, pulled off
his coat, and tied the sleeves over his shoulder, sash fashion. Then he
waved his hand to his father and to Little Crotchet, and went rapidly
down the hill. He had undertaken the adventure in a spirit of bravado.
He knew that a number of the neighbors had tried to solve the mystery of
the smoke in the swamp and had failed. He thought, too, that he would
fail; and yet he was urged on by the belief that if he should happen to
succeed, all the boys and all the girls in the neighborhood would regard
him as a wonderful young man. He had the same ambition that animated the
knights of old, but on a smaller scale.


III.

Now it chanced that Little Crotchet himself was on his way to the smoke
in the swamp. He had been watching it, and wondering whether he should
go to it by the path he knew, or whether he should go by the road that
Aaron, the runaway, had told him of. Ben Gadsby interfered with his
plans somewhat; for, quite by accident, young Gadsby, as he went down
the hill, struck into the path that Little Crotchet knew. There was a
chance to gallop along the brow of the hill, turn to the left, plunge
through a shallow lagoon, and strike into the path ahead of Gadsby, and
this chance Little Crotchet took. He waved his hand to Mr. Jonathan
Gadsby, gave the gray pony the rein, and went galloping through the
underbrush, his crutches rattling, and the rings of the bridle-bit
jingling. To Mr. Jonathan Gadsby it seemed that the lad was riding
recklessly, and he groaned and shook his head as he turned and went on
his way.

But Little Crotchet rode on. Turning sharply to the left as soon as he
got out of sight, he went plunging through the lagoon, and was soon
going along the blind path a quarter of a mile ahead of Ben Gadsby. This
is why young Gadsby was so much disturbed that he lost his way. He was
bold enough when he started out, but by the time he had descended the
hill and struck into what he thought was a cattle-path his courage began
to fail him. The tall canes seemed to bend above him in a threatening
manner. The silence oppressed him. Everything was so still that the echo
of his own movements as he brushed along the narrow path seemed to
develop into ominous whispers, as if all the goblins he had ever heard
of had congregated in front of him to bar his way.

The silence, with its strange echoes, was bad enough, but when he heard
the snorting of Little Crotchet's gray pony as it plunged through the
lagoon, the rattle of the crutches and the jingling of the bridle-bit,
he fell into a panic. What great beast could it be that went
helter-skelter through this dark and silent swamp, swimming through the
water and tearing through the quagmires? And yet, when Ben Gadsby would
have turned back, the rank undergrowth and the trailing vines had quite
obscured the track. The fear that impelled him to retrace his steps was
equally powerful in impelling him to go forward. And this seemed the
easiest plan. He felt that it would be just as safe to go on, having
once made the venture, as to turn back. He had a presentiment that he
would never find his way out anyhow, and the panic he was in nerved him
to the point of desperation.

So on he went, not always trying to follow the path, but plunging
forward aimlessly. In half an hour he was calmer, and pretty soon he
found the ground firm under his feet. His instincts as a bee-hunter came
back to him. He had started in from the east side, and he paused to take
his bearings. But it was hard to see the sun, and in the recesses of the
swamp the mosses grew on all sides of the trees. And yet there was a
difference, which Ben Gadsby did not fail to discover and take account
of. They grew thicker and larger on the north side, and remembering
this, he went forward with more confidence.

He found that the middle of the swamp was comparatively dry. Huge
poplar-trees stood ranged about, the largest he had ever seen. In the
midst of a group of trees he found one that was hollow, and in this
hollow he found the smouldering embers of a fire. But for the strange
silence that surrounded him he would have given a whoop of triumph; but
he restrained himself. Bee-hunter that he was, he took his coat from his
shoulders and tied it around a small slim sapling standing near the big
poplar where he had found the fire. It was his way when he found a
bee-tree. It was a sort of guide. In returning he would take the general
direction, and then hunt about until he found his coat; and it was much
easier to find a tree tagged with a coat than it was to find one not
similarly marked.

Thus, instead of whooping triumphantly, Ben Gadsby simply tied his coat
about the nearest sapling, nodding his head significantly as he did so.
He had unearthed the secret and unravelled the mystery, and now he would
go and call in such of the neighbors as were near at hand and show them
what a simple thing the great mystery was. He knew that he had found the
hiding-place of Aaron the runaway. So he fixed his "landmark," and
started out of the swamp with a lighter heart than he had when he came
in.

To make sure of his latitude and longitude, he turned in his tracks when
he had gone a little distance and looked for the tree on which he had
tied his coat. But it was not to be seen. He retraced his steps, trying
to find his coat. Looking about him cautiously, he saw the garment after
a while, but it was in an entirely different direction from what he
supposed it would be. It was tied to a sapling, and the sapling was near
a big poplar. To satisfy himself, he returned to make a closer
examination. Sure enough, there was the coat, but the poplar close by
was not a hollow poplar, nor was it as large as the tree in which Ben
Gadsby had found the smouldering embers of a fire.

He sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and scratched his head, and
discussed the matter in his mind the best he could. Finally he concluded
that it would be a very easy matter, after he found his coat again, to
find the hollow poplar. So he started home again. But he had not gone
far when he turned around to take another view of his coat.

It had disappeared. Ben Gadsby looked carefully around, and then a
feeling of terror crept over his whole body--a feeling that nearly
paralyzed his limbs. He tried to overcome this feeling, and did so to a
certain degree. He plucked up sufficient courage to return and try to
find his coat; but the task was indeed bewildering. He thought he had
never seen so many large poplars with small slim saplings standing near
them, and then he began to wander around almost aimlessly.


IV.

Suddenly he heard a scream that almost paralyzed him--a scream that was
followed by the sound of a struggle going on in the thick undergrowth
close at hand. He could see the muddy water splash above the bushes, and
he could hear fierce growlings and gruntings. Before he could make up
his mind what to do, a gigantic mulatto, with torn clothes and staring
eyes, rushed out of the swamp, and came rushing by, closely pursued by a
big white boar, with open mouth and fierce cries. The white boar was
right at the mulatto's heels, and his yellow tusks gleamed viciously as
he ran with open mouth. Pursuer and pursued disappeared in the bushes
with a splash and a crash, and then all was as still as before. In fact,
the silence seemed profounder for this uncanny and appalling
disturbance. It was so unnatural that half a minute after it occurred
Ben Gadsby was not certain whether it had occurred at all. He was a
pretty bold youth, having been used to the woods and fields all his
life, but he had now beheld a spectacle so out of the ordinary, and of
so startling a character, that he made haste to get out of the swamp as
fast as his legs, weakened by fear, would carry him.

More than once, as he made his way out of the swamp, he paused to
listen; and it seemed that each time he paused an owl, or some other
bird of noiseless wing, made a sudden swoop at his head. Beyond the
exclamation he made when this occurred the silence was unbroken. This
experience was unusual enough to hasten his steps, even if he had no
other motive for haste.

When nearly out of the swamp, he came upon a large poplar, by the side
of which a small slim sapling was growing. Tied around this sapling was
his coat, which he thought he had left in the middle of the swamp. The
sight almost took his breath away.

He examined the coat carefully, and found that the sleeves were tied
around the tree just as he had tied them. He felt in the pockets.
Everything was just as he had left it. He examined the poplar; it was
hollow, and in the hollow was a pile of ashes.

"Well!" exclaimed Ben Gadsby. "I'm the biggest fool that ever walked the
earth. If I 'ain't been asleep and dreamed all this, I'm crazy; and if
I've been asleep, I'm a fool."

His experience had been so queer and so confusing that he promised
himself he'd never tell it where any of the older people could hear it,
for he knew that they would not only treat his tale with scorn and
contempt, but would make him the butt of ridicule among the younger
folks. "I know exactly what they'd say," he remarked to himself. "They'd
declare that a skeer'd hog run across my path, and that I was skeer'der
than the hog."

So Ben Gadsby took his coat from the sapling, and went trudging along
his way toward the big road. When he reached that point he turned and
looked toward the swamp. Much to his surprise, the stream of blue smoke
was still flowing upward. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but there
was the smoke. His surprise was still greater when he saw Little
Crotchet and the gray pony come ambling up the hill in the path he had
just come over.

"What did you find?" asked Little Crotchet, as he reined in the gray
pony.

"Nothing--nothing at all," replied Ben Gadsby, determined not to commit
himself.

"Nothing?" cried Little Crotchet. "Well, you ought to have been with me!
Why, I saw sights! The birds flew in my face, and when I got in the
middle of the swamp a big white hog came rushing out, and if this gray
pony hadn't have been the nimblest of his kind, you'd have never seen me
any more."

"Is that so?" asked Ben Gadsby, in a dazed way. "Well, I declare! 'Twas
all quiet with me. I just went in and come out again, and that's all
there is to it."

"I wish I'd been with you," said Little Crotchet, with a curious laugh.
"Good-by!"

With that he wheeled the gray pony and rode off home. Ben Gadsby watched
Little Crotchet out of sight, and then, with a gesture of despair,
surprise, or indignation, flung his coat on the ground, crying, "Well,
by jing!"


V.

That night there was so much laughter in the top story of the
Abercrombie house that the old Colonel himself came to the foot of the
stairs and called out to know what the matter was.

"It's nobody but me," replied Little Crotchet. "I was just laughing."

Colonel Abercrombie paused, as if waiting for some further explanation,
but hearing none, said, "Good-night, my son, and God bless you!"

"Good-night, father dear," exclaimed the lad, flinging a kiss at the
shadow his father's candle flung on the wall. Then he turned again into
his own room, where Aaron the Arab (son of Ben Ali) sat leaning against
the wall, as silent and as impassive as a block of tawny marble.

Little Crotchet lay back on his bed, and the two were silent for a time.
Finally Aaron said:

"The white grunter carried his play too far. He nipped a piece from my
leg."

"I never saw anything like it," remarked Little Crotchet. "I thought the
white pig was angry. You did that to frighten Ben Gadsby."

"Yes, little master," responded Aaron, "and I'm thinking the young man
will never hunt for the smoke in the swamp any more."

Little Crotchet laughed again, as he remembered how Ben Gadsby looked as
Aaron and the white pig went careening across the dry place in the
swamp. There was a silence again, and then Aaron said he must be going.

"And when are you going home to your master?" Little Crotchet asked.

"Never!" replied Aaron the runaway, with emphasis. "Never! He is no
master of mine. He is a bad man."

Then he undressed Little Crotchet, tucked the cover about him--for the
nights were growing chilly--whispered good-night, and slipped from the
window, letting down the sash gently as he went out. If any one had been
watching, he would have seen the tall Arab steal along the roof until he
came to the limb of an oak that touched the eaves. Along this he went
nimbly, glided down the trunk to the ground, and disappeared in the
darkness.



A POPULAR SCHOOL.


  When Jacky got his new club skates he tried the old Dutch roll,
  And in the course of several weeks attained his humble goal.

  Then practising three hours a day, when there was ice to skate,
  He learned, a fortnight later on, to cut the figure eight.

  By this success encouraged, he essayed a loftier flight,
  And, in a month, upon the ice his name could fairly write.

  When Jacky's teacher heard of this, in truth he marvelled much,
  For he had found that Jacky knew but little of the Dutch.

  "In half the time you took to learn the figure eight," said he,
  "You might in your arithmetic have learned the Rule of Three.

  "And though your name you deftly trace with educated feet,
  The penmanship you do by hand, alas! is far from neat.

  "But since 'tis clear that unrequired tasks you quickest learn,
  My school to an athletic club I now propose to turn;

  "And then, perhaps, when tired of the stunts I'll make you do,
  You'll turn for recreation to the books you now eschew."

  H. G. PAINE.



[Illustration: A BUSY DAY IN THE STOCK EXCHANGE.]

THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE.

BY HUBERT EARL.


A little gathering of men met under a buttonwood-tree in 1792, opposite
what is now No. 60 Wall Street, and formed an association for the
purpose of exchange and more ready current transaction of business. From
this crude organization has grown the present New York Stock Exchange
with its immense capital. Installed in a dignified edifice between Broad
and New streets, with an entrance on Wall Street, its eleven hundred
members transact business daily between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M. No
transactions are allowed before or after these hours, a heavy fine being
the penalty for each offence, and such contracts not being recognized by
the governing committee of the Exchange.

A membership in the Stock Exchange is worth a small fortune, for the
seats have sold as high as $32,500, though at present they do not bring
over $18,000. The brokers are both rich and poor, but adding the value
of the memberships to an estimated average capital of $100,000 for each
member, $150,000,000 is a conservative figure of the capital invested.

To the casual visitor who finds himself leaning over the handsome
balcony rail looking down upon the immense floor of the Board-Room the
howling gesticulating crowd of brokers appears like a mob of lunatics,
and the occasional half-clipped calls that rise to his ears justify the
comparison. Sign-posts are placed about the floor, bearing the names of
the different stocks dealt in, and around these posts the brokers gather
to buy and sell. When a particular stock is what is termed active, the
brokers dealing in it surge madly around the post assigned to it, and
amid deafening yells make their contracts. An ideal broker is one whose
face never betrays any emotion, but remains perfectly passive, whether
his stock transactions net him an enormous gain or lose him a fortune.

Many brokers act as agents for firms, but most firms have their own
representative always on the floor. At times, though, to prevent the
discovery of a big deal or an attempt to corner the market in some
particular stock, it is necessary to call in the service of more
brokers. A percentage is paid for such service, the minimum being $2 for
every hundred shares that are valued at $100 each.

The members know each other, and frequently in the crowd a broker will
stand with his slips in one hand, his eyes glued upon his memoranda, and
with his other hand emphasizing his calls with lunging jerks, as he
sends forth such yells as "One hundred at 84." Again and again he
repeats his yell, and then changes it to 83-3/4 for a hundred. "Take
'em," comes the cry, to which he answers, "Sold"; and then jots down the
transaction, never once looking to see who the buyer was, but relying
upon the voice, which he knows. These transactions are invariably
fulfilled to the letter, and there is no record during the existence of
the Exchange of such a contract being disacknowledged. If this broker
wants the transaction sent to his firm, he jots it down on a slip, and
before he can turn around, one of the fifty-odd gray-uniformed
messengers on the floor takes it, and runs off to the side of the room
to that broker's telephone, and hands the memorandum to the operator,
who telephones his firm.

Should a firm want to talk with their representative over the telephone,
it is necessary to call him off the floor. As none but members are
allowed on the floor, and no voice is strong enough to be heard calling
above the fearful screech of bids and offers, a number system was
devised for this purpose. Each broker has a number, and a rack on one of
the walls has a corresponding number. A call is sent to the boy who
works the annunciator to put up, say, 48. He pulls a knob, and instantly
that number is exposed on the rack. Every now and then each broker
glances at his rack, and when he sees his number he goes out either to
the telephone or to the messenger or person who may want to see him.
This silent call is discontinued after it has served its purpose.

There are a large number of telephones required, and a number of
alleyways are partitioned off at the sides of the floor, in which line
after line of telephones are placed, each one with its operator, who
never leaves it. Then there is the telegraph service. Every transaction
of any importance is sent over the wires. It has hardly taken place
before the anxious watcher at some ticker reads its record on the tape,
whether it be one hundred yards from the floor of the Exchange or a
thousand miles away. If he is holding any particular stock that has
advanced, and wishing to take advantage of the fact, he decides to sell,
he telegraphs his New York brokers to sell for him. They telephone their
representative on the floor of the Exchange, and in a very short time
these shares are being offered, and the owner, probably miles away,
watching the tape of his ticker, notes with a smile of satisfaction the
records unfolding before him: 100 shares at 87-3/8, 300 shares 87-1/4,
200 shares at 87, and so on. These shares may have been purchased by him
around 79 or 80, or possibly much less, and the transaction nets him a
neat profit. It is often the reverse, though, and almost fortunes are
made and lost daily by such speculations.

The stock-brokers do not like long words, as is evidenced in the terms
they have regulated into a dialect of their own. To the uninitiated it
is very confusing to hear such remarks as "long of stocks," "holding for
a raise," "ballooning a stock," "saddling the market," "gunning a
stock," etc., etc. Many of these terms are pithy, and very much to the
point.

The stock-broker is generally a generous, genial, happy sort of person,
well dressed, and, for a life of mental strain, with a reverse of
fortune liable to strike him at any time, he keeps in wonderfully good
spirits.

The Exchange is most interesting during a panic, when prices are
dropping all around, and when stocks that are as solid as
foundation-stones begin to drop below par. It is then that the broker
grows frenzied--sometimes with fear, sometimes with rage. Fiercely he
elbows, jostles, or fights his way through the mad crowd. Shout after
shout ascends to the ceiling as the prices fall, and out on the street
the quiet retired business man who has come down to watch his shares,
only to see them rapidly falling, bites his finger-nails nervously in
the anxious crowd that has gathered, listening to the roar. Messengers
dart here and there, and mad haste prevails. Suddenly a silence comes
over the Exchange, and the crowd on the floor have packed closely around
the chairman's platform. He gravely and sadly announces the failure of
some well-known firm. This will probably drag down into the vortex two
or three smaller houses; and when the full import is realized by the
members a deafening yell is heard, and again they dash into the fray to
make, save, or lose a fortune.

Strongly contrasted to this are the jollity and merrymaking on the floor
of the Exchange before the holidays. High carnival then reigns supreme,
and fun and mirth grow furious. Clothes are torn, hats smashed, all in
good humor. Gray-haired brokers waltz with each other, play leap-frog,
sing, and carry on as wildly as the younger ones. Sometimes, but not
often, the chairman imposes a fine on the members for their fun, but it
is cheerfully paid. After such toil day in and day out through the long
months a little exuberance of spirit is excusable.



THE BOY WRECKERS.

BY W. O. STODDARD.


CHAPTER II.

THE RIDDLE FROM UNDER THE WATER.

The _Elephant_ rocked and pitched a great deal while Captain Kroom was
fishing up that valise with his long boat-hook.

Pete was all the while hard at work with the oars, and he was conducting
himself like a prime seaman. That is, he obeyed with scrupulous
exactness all the orders he received from the veteran commander of his
ship. For him, indeed, Pete evidently had a tremendous amount of
respect. Much of it belonged to his belief that the old sailor knew all
there was to know about whatever might be on the sea or in it.

"Sam," he said, "let that bundle alone a minute, and see if you can
h'ist the sail."

"He can't h'ist a sail," growled the Captain. "He's a landlubber."

Sam's pride was up in an instant, and he caught hold of the ropes. He
did know a little about them already, and he had the good luck to pull
correctly. Up went the sail, just as the valise came over the side. The
bundle already lay on the bottom, and it had taken all the strength Sam
had to get it there.

It was not so large a bundle, to be sure, but lifting it in had been
somewhat like carrying two pails of water, for it was what the Captain
called "waterlogged."

Not so with the valise. It was larger than the bundle, and it must have
been very heavy; but it did not seem to weigh much in the strong hands
of old Kroom.

"Here we go!" he shouted. "I'll just tack around till I get a hitch on
that spar. It's just what I want for a new mast to the _Tiger_!"

"That's his sail-boat," said Pete to Sam. "She isn't so fast as some,
but she can go right out to sea. She's decked over."

"She's as safe as a pilot-boat," added the Captain. "But the feller left
his key in the lock. I won't open it now. This here stuff wasn't any
part of a raft. It was just a tangle. Those knots wasn't ever tied by a
sailor." He seemed to read knots and ropes and sails and spars as if
they carried tokens as clear to him as print. "Sam," he said, "haul that
rope a little. Now I can bring her about. We'll have that spar."

So he did, in a few minutes; but the _Elephant_ was not likely to sail
any too fast with that thing towing astern. Pete had been eying the
bundle curiously, and the moment he was permitted to pull in his oars he
exclaimed:

"Now let's have it open. I say, Captain, it's covered with tarpaulin!"

"That didn't keep it from soaking," replied Kroom. "Cut it. Bless my
soul! What on earth is that?"

The two boys had worked together in untying and opening the bundle, and
now all its contents suddenly sprawled around the bottom of the boat.

"Best lot of fishing-tackle ever I saw," said Pete. "And if it isn't a
full suit of blue!"

"Hope it'll fit you," said the Captain.

"Looks as if it might. Sam's got one on him. But I don't need any more
tackle than I've got at home, unless it is some hooks and sinkers."

"Pete," said Sam, "spread 'em out to dry. Then you can see if they fit."

The fact was that Pete was the only member of the _Elephant_'s crew of
three who stood in need of new clothing. The suit he had on consisted
mainly of a pair of baggy trousers and a tow shirt. It did not keep him
from being a pretty good looking fellow, however, and his own feelings
about it did not hurt him.

"Guess they won't make a dude of me," he remarked, as he spread the
soaked blue suit out forward, where the wind and sun could get at it.
"It's a kind of sailor rig, anyhow."

"It'll shrink to your size," said the Captain. "'Twasn't made for a big
fellow."

The _Elephant_ was now before the wind, and was tugging spitefully
against the rope which bound her to the spar behind her. Now that the
bundle had given up all that was in it, the next point of interest was
the valise.

Once more the Captain remarked, "His key is in it."

Then he hesitated, and stared down at the key as if reading something.

"Rusty," he said. "But it doesn't take long for iron to rust in salt
water. You can't judge by that."

"Captain Kroom," exclaimed Sam, "there used to be a name on this end of
it, but it's kind of washed out."

"No," replied Kroom; "it's just so on this other end. It wasn't washed
out; it was rubbed out. This 'ere thing's been stole."

He said it almost solemnly, and the boys felt a kind of thrill. There
had been excitement enough in the idea of a wreck, and now the Captain
had put in thieves also.

"Pirates?" suggested Pete. "Could they have plundered the ship?"

"No, sir!" roared the Captain. "All the pirates are dead long ago. This
means wrecks and wreckers over on the south beach somewhere. Come on,
boys. I'll cast off the spar. We're going across the bay. I'm no thief.
I'm going to see if I can't find an owner for this valise. Ready!"

The spar was left to drift ashore as best it might, only that the
Captain said he would go after it some time.

The _Elephant_ was once more free, but her nose was pointed now toward
the long low bar of sand, the narrow, tree-less island, which separated
the bay from the ocean.

"He's going to run for the inlet," said Pete to Sam. "There's good
fishing there, whether he finds any wreck or not."

"We're going too fast to troll," said the Captain. "No use. Besides, we
want to get there as soon as we can. If there's anything I hate, it's a
wrecker. I didn't think so once, but the first time I was wrecked myself
I guess I learned something."

Sam had been staring curiously at the valise, and wishing that the
Captain would think it right to open it, but now he turned to look at
the old sailor himself. It was a good deal to be out in a boat with a
man who had been wrecked. He did not really mean to say anything, but a
question came up to his lips, and asked, almost without his help, "Were
you wrecked 'mong savages?"

"Yes, sir, I was," growled the Captain, angrily. "We went ashore on the
coast of Cornwall, in England, and the folks there believe everything
that's stranded belongs to them. They didn't leave us a thing."

"They didn't hurt you, did they?" said Sam.

"I don't know but what they would, some of them, if it hadn't been for
the coast police that came," said Kroom. "They kep' the crowd off, so we
saved what we had on; and then they marched us away and put every man of
us in jail, where the civilized Englishmen could feed us."

"That was awful!" said Pete; but he had already turned over the wet
clothing once, and it was drying fast. He pulled out the wrinkles too.

"'Tisn't rotted," remarked the Captain, "or you'd ha' pulled it to
pieces. I ain't worried about your having of 'em. Nor the tackle. All I
want to get at is if there's been a wreck. Yes, sir, when I was wrecked
in China, we saved all our chists--but then a Chinee can't wear anything
we can. Perhaps they didn't want 'em. They treated us first rate."

He had been fumbling with the rusty key with one hand while he steered
with the other, and now the boys heard a click.

"There!" muttered the Captain. "The lock wasn't sp'iled. I'll unstrap
it."

Sam and Pete leaned forward to watch, but the soaked straps did not pull
out easily, and they had to wait.

"How they do stick!" said Pete. "Captain, I can do it. It takes both
hands."

The _Elephant_ careened just then in a way to compel its sailing-master
to use both of his own hands in bringing it before the wind again.

"Pitch in, Pete," he said. "Just as like as not it'll tell where it came
from."

Sam let his friend work at the wet straps, while he continued to study
the name at his end of the valise.

"'Tisn't a long one," he remarked; but at that moment Captain Kroom
almost let go of the tiller-ropes, for the valise sprang open.

"Packed and jammed!" exclaimed Pete. "Hullo! What's this?"

"Hand me that log!" shouted the Captain, and Sam looked around the boat
for loose timber. Not any kind of log was to be seen; the floating spar
was long since out of sight; but Pete at once picked up and handed to
Kroom a broad, thin, paper-covered blank book which lay in the middle of
the valise.

"Bless my soul!" said Captain Kroom. "This 'ere's the log of the good
ship _Narragansett_, of New Haven, and her captain's name is Pickering.
The last entry in it is only a week old. Yes, sir, boys! He made it
after the gale struck 'em! Before she was wrecked. This 'ere's awful!
She must ha' gone all to pieces! Now for the inlet! Hurrah!"

His voice sounded excited, but he sat as steady as a post, and seemed to
be giving all his attention to the management of the _Elephant_.

"Sam," he said, "you and Pete read some more of that log. Don't you
fetch a thing in the valise. There are his barkers and his chronometer
and lots o' papers. But that there alligator-skin valise was
water-tight. It came across the bar at the inlet with the tide. There's
current enough there then to whisk in a cannon."

Sam was a landsman, but he listened eagerly to all the Captain had to
say about the ways of the coast and about the coming and going of ships.
None of it seemed to be at all new to Pete; but then he had been born
and brought up within sight of salt water, and he had heard Kroom talk
many a time before.

The _Elephant_ put her nose through or over the waves as if she were in
a hurry, and all the while her crew were getting more accustomed to the
presence of the valise. Sam studied its contents, all he could see of
them, and he was learning something.

"That's the chronometer," he thought. "It's a big watch in a mahogany
box. That's a splendid compass. Those pistols are what the Captain calls
'barkers.'"

"You see," remarked Kroom, as if answering him, "as soon as the
commander of a ship knows he's going to be wrecked, it's his duty to
save those things. He must save his log and his papers, if he can't save
anything else. Captain Pickering got 'em together, and then somebody
beat him out of them. Now it's my duty to get 'em to the owner of the
ship. No trouble about that, but we must learn all we can first. Sam, if
you've read anything, read it out. It's the worst kind of writing."

That was what Sam had found, and he had had some doubt as to how much it
was right for him to read. Now, however, he was getting more courageous.
It seemed so much more honest than merely fishing up things and keeping
them. He read, therefore, a line or so at a time, picking it out; but it
required an interpreter, for all the sentences were short and jerky.

"Stop there!" said Captain Kroom. "I'll fix it up. Never mind his
latitudes and longitudes. She was a three-master, and she was in the
China trade, and she was getting near home when the hurricane struck
her. We had the heel of that gale all along shore last week. Blew down
trees and upset things. I'll bet you the _Narragansett_ went to pieces.
Hurrah! There's the inlet. Hand me that log. I'll just shut it up. Now,
boys, I'll show you what a boat of this kind can do."

"Don't you be afraid, Sam," said Pete, encouragingly. "It'll be awful
rough outside the bar, but he knows. We're going right through."

[Illustration: RUNNING OUT OF THE INLET.]

Sam did not exactly feel afraid, but he was disposed to keep a tight
hold upon the gunwale of the _Elephant_. There was really a great deal
of her, he was beginning to see, and pretty soon she was gliding along
over the smooth water of the inlet. It was a channel, not straight by
any means, that was nowhere over a hundred yards wide. On either side
were only long ranges of low sand hills and marshes. The bay was behind
them, and right ahead, Sam could not guess how far away, he could hear a
booming sound, that came, he knew, from the great Atlantic billows
which came rolling in to thunder and die along the shore.

"Bully breeze!" shouted Pete. "Out we go! Hurrah! Look at the surf!"

Sam was staring very earnestly indeed at the long lines of foaming water
that were springing into the air, curling over and tossing to and fro in
shattered masses of froth and blue. He knew that there was danger in
them, and he felt queer concerning what might be coming next.

The Captain, however, was sitting as steadily as usual. Sam had seen him
take something out of the valise before closing it, but he had not dared
to ask any questions. He was almost afraid of Captain Kroom, and even
now, as he looked at him, he was thinking:

"I wish I knew how many times he's been wrecked, and where. He must have
seen the most awful kind of things."

It had been a black leather case, and now the Captain opened it, taking
out a thing that Sam recognized at once.

"It's what they call an opera-glass," he said to himself, but he was
wrong.

It was a binocular marine telescope of the finest kind, very much like
the glasses which generals use on a battlefield to study the battle
with. The Captain was now searching the lines of breakers and the open
sea outside of them, and he suddenly lowered his glass to roar:

"Thereaway, boys! Just a few points southerly. Stuck on the outer bar.
Hull half out of water. Not a stick standing. Two tug-boats there
already, and a steamer. We've got her! Hurrah!"

He kindly held out the glass to Pete, and steadied the boat while the
'longshore boy took a long squint in the direction indicated.

"I've found her!" exclaimed Pete. "But maybe 'tisn't the
_Narragansett_."

"You bet it is," said the Captain. "There didn't two ships o' that kind
come ashore at the same time. There aren't many of 'em left nowadays,
anyhow--more's the pity! The steamers have run 'em out. But I'll tell
you what, boys, there's more real sailin' to be had in an old-fashioned
clipper-ship than there is in all the steamers afloat. If there's
anything I hate, it's a steamer."

Pete passed the glass along to Sam, but it was almost a full minute
before he could find anything but waves to look at. "There she is," he
said at last. "I see her, if that's her. Kind of speck." He was getting
used to the glass now, and pretty quickly he was as excited as either
Pete or the Captain, but he asked, anxiously, "How are we to get there?"

The line of breakers seemed to be in the way, and they looked
impassable. Such a boat as the _Elephant_, or almost any other, would be
a mere cork in the grasp of those tremendous rollers.

"They would jump us twenty feet into the air," thought Sam. "It's awful!
I don't care whether he gets his old valise or not."

Pete, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking mainly of his share in
the management of the _Elephant_, but as she swung away upon another
tack, he remarked to Sam: "See that surf? Well, right in there, if they
can get near enough to throw a line, the sporting fishermen strike the
biggest bass you ever saw. Takes half an hour to pull one in sometimes."

That was a kind of fun of which Sam knew nothing, but he replied: "We'll
come again and try it on. But where are we going now?"

"You'll see in a minute," said Pete.

It was many minutes, instead of only one, before Sam had any clear idea
of what Captain Kroom was up to. The _Elephant_ appeared to be running
along the seaward line of the sand-bar, between that and the breakers.
Then to the left Sam saw a break in the surf--a streak of pretty smooth
water with foaming "boilers" on both sides of it. Into that streak the
old sailor steered the three-cornered boat.

Oh, how she did dance, and how Sam did hold on! But he did not utter a
sound, and the next thing he knew the mere cockle-shell under him was
sailing along well enough, safely enough, over the long regular swells,
not at all boisterous or dangerous, of the great ocean that was three
thousand miles wide.

"I didn't believe he could do it," thought Sam. "We may get to the
_Narragansett_, but how on earth are we to get back again?"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



[Illustration]

A LOYAL TRAITOR.[1]

[1] Begun in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE No. 888.

A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.

BY JAMES BARNES.


CHAPTER VIII.

FREEFOOTED.

When I arrived at the flat rock I hurried into the suit of sailor
toggery, damp from the wet of the dew; and making a pile, and a very
small one, of my treasures, I ripped out the back of my embroidered
waistcoat and tied them up in it.

Striking out for the highway, I soon gained it and started on a
dog-trot, headed south. My lungs and legs must have been in good
condition, for I kept it up steadily for an hour or so. (It may seem
imagination, but I believe people can run faster and longer at night;
maybe the distance seems shorter because we observe less clearly.)

Soon I began to recognize the well-known signs of approaching dawn. I
had heard a fox bark up in the hills some time since, and now, as if in
challenge, the crowing of cocks sounded and drowsy songsters fluttered
twittering in the branches of the trees along the road. Before the sun
had risen, round and red, the robins were piping and the thrushes
tinkling their throat-bells on every hand.

I was in a new country, a much richer one than that of a few miles
farther north; the farms were nearer together, and prosperity was plain
on the face of the earth. The damp morning mists that hung over the
brown new-ploughed ground smelled of growing things, and the buds on the
trees, as they opened to the warmth of morning, scattered their scents
lavishly.

I had signalled out at the bottom of a hill a house at which I intended
stopping and getting a meal if I could; but as I went by a pasture I saw
a man driving some cows through an opening in the fence. He saw me also,
and hurrying about his work, he came walking toward me. I now perceived
that my costume was a pass-word to people's hearts.

"Good-mornin', lad," hailed the farmer, who was a man past middle age.
"Goin' off to sea again, be ye?"

"Yes," I replied, stepping to the fence. "Am I on the right road for
Stonington?"

"Air ye in the navy?" he asked, without replying to my question.

"No; but I'm to ship aboard the _Young Eagle_ below."

"Oh, privateersman, eh? More money in it, I reckon. But there's no lack
of glory in the sarvice. I have a son aboard the _Constitution_. He was
in her when she fit the _Guerrière_. When I think of it, I allus feel
like cheerin'."

And then and there the farmer took off his hat and gave three lusty
cheers--in which, despite myself, and not knowing anything about the
subject, I joined.

"My name is Prouty," the old farmer went on. "And my son's name is
Melvin Prouty. Ye'll hear tell on him afore long. He's got promoted
already. He's a quartermaster."

"Good!" I exclaimed, for notwithstanding my sailor's rig, I was
supposing a quartermaster must be next to a commodore at least.

"Well, I won't keep ye. Good-luck and good-by," he said, extending his
rough hand across the fence.

I shook it warmly, and picking up my small bundle, trotted down the
hill. I covered some two miles more before I stopped at a farm-house for
breakfast. Here I was received with as much honor as if my short
stopping was to cast a blessing. I found that I had to adopt some
subterfuge; and when asked what vessel I had served in, I replied, and
with truth, "the _Minetta_, from Baltimore," and that I was bound to
join the _Young Eagle_. Her fame evidently had spread broadcast, and I
cannot forget the envious looks that were cast at me by a couple of
youngsters, who requested to know if I had any pictures on my arms. As I
had none, and had seen them on my voyage, and often before that, pricked
into the skins of the sailors on the wharves, I determined to remedy
this defect as soon as possible.

The goodwife of the house where I got my first meal insisted upon my
carrying away enough to stock me for a voyage of two or three days; but
it was mostly pie, for which I care little.

The main road was so well travelled that there was no mistaking it now.
My legs, as well as my heart, seemed gifted with a desire to get ahead,
and every one I met had for me a kindly wave of the hand, and would have
questioned me breathless had I not made haste and hurried on.

By four o'clock that afternoon I had mounted to the top of the hill, and
there I caught a glimpse of the ocean, and stretching to the westward,
the blue sound. Oh, how the picture comes to me! The wide sparkling sea;
here and there a white sail dotted on it, and the breeze, that was from
the south, bringing the smell of it to my nostrils and setting my heart
beating and thumping in my throat. Overhead a great hawk spun about in
widening circles. I knew how he felt, for was not I free, and the world
before me at my feet?

Out of pure joy and the loftiness of my spirits, I threw the Portugee
cap into the air and caught it as it fell. And nothing would do but I
must start at a headlong pace down the hill, jumping the water-bars and
kicking my heels behind me as if I were a colt escaped from a pasture.
By the time that I had entered the houses that clustered about the
outskirts of the town it grew dusky, and I began to feel a trifle tired,
for I had covered the distance of some thirty miles that day.

As the dwellings became thicker and I could see the clustering lights of
the business portion of the town (it was past twilight), I felt a little
trepidation. People had not paid so much attention to me as they had
farther up the country, and I had run across one or two sailor-men,
dressed much as I was (save the cap), who had hailed me good-naturedly.
But I longed for a bed and a warm cup of coffee, and seeing a citizen
leaning over a fence, smoking meditatively, I inquired my way to the
best inn.

"I should 'a' reckoned that you'd 'a' known them all by this time, lad,"
he said; "but the best hotel is the United States, down near the
wharves. Keep straight ahead."

Now the groups of sailor-men had increased; to all appearances they had
gained possession of the freedom of the town of Stonington. They seemed
to have captured the prettiest girls, or bargained to drink the place
dry, for from a grog-shop a number of them reeled out, arm in arm,
singing a song to a tune that I learned to know and sing well afterwards
myself--"Hull's Victory"--and the sound of fiddles and dancing were to
all sides.

It was only a few steps now to the United States Hotel, and I turned
from the street and entered. A number of loungers were on the broad
veranda. A group of men--one in a cocked hat and blue coat with brass
buttons--were sitting about a table on which there was much to drink,
and they were not slighting it.

But here no one gave me more than a glance, and I entered the
coffee-room, where I found a corner and placed my little bundle at my
feet. A hubbub of conversation and much strong tobacco filled the place,
and the waiters were so busy that I did not know enough to insist upon
gaining their attention, and no one sought me out. I had sat there but a
few minutes when I became engrossed, listening open-mouthed to a group
of seamen talking within a short distance of me. One of them was telling
of the action between the _Hornet_ and the _Peacock_, and he
interspersed his talk by constantly calling to those about him to drink
the health of "Lawrence, the bravest officer that ever trod a deck."

I here learned that a man may be a hero by mere reflected glory, for
each one who drank with him nodded to the speaker as if Lawrence were
his name. Suddenly I perceived that a man in a long apron was standing
at my elbow.

"What is the order, messmate?" he asked familiarly.

I replied by asking for some coffee, and stating that I would like to
get a room for the night. This evidently caused him some surprise.

"Rooms come high," he replied, looking at me, "but I can get you the
coffee, right enough."

I had seen one of the sailors, in paying his reckoning, wave back the
change due him into the waiter's palm, so when the man returned, I
offered him one of the gold pieces in my pocket. He looked at it
curiously, bit it, and took it over to a table and showed it to some of
the sailors. The man to whom he handed it rang it on the bottom of the
upturned plate.

"Good gold," he said, "and French. I've seen 'em often."

Whether he told the value of it or not I do not know, but soon the
waiter returned with a half-handful of silver coin. I waved it back at
him, and the man's eyes grew large. He returned to the sailors and spoke
to them.

"Just back from a cruise, I dare say," said one, looking over his
shoulder at me, but not addressing me.

"He doesn't look it," replied another. "But one can't tell nowadays.
There was a girlish-looking lad--" Here the man began a yarn in a low
voice, and I buried my face in my coffee-cup, and almost scalded my
throat, for it was steaming hot.

At this moment the waiter returned.

"I've got a room for you, messmate," he said, "and the best one in the
house. If you've got your box ashore, I'll take it up myself."

"No, thanks," I replied. "I have nothing with me," hiding at the same
time my little bundle with my feet.

I noticed that the man was looking very carefully at my hands. Although
they were not soft exactly, as they had been hardened by the chopping of
wood and the handling of hoe and spade, the life of the sailor-man
stamps the hands so distinctly to the eye of a close observer that there
is no chance for wrong in judging.

"Will you follow me? I'll show you up to the room," said the waiter-man.

I picked up my bundle and squeezed it under my arm, and followed him out
of the room, creating no little comment, I dare say, for not a few
craned their necks to get a look at me. In the hallway my guide stopped
and spoke to a large florid person in a stained satin waistcoat.

"Here is the lad who wishes a room, Mr. Purdy," he said.

The big man looked at me from head to foot.

"It will cost two dollars, and we will give you your breakfast. Is it a
lark of yours, lad? Eh? I know of a sailor with money giving a dollar
bill to a cow to chew on for a cud. But it's your game to play the
gentleman, eh?"

"I trust I am as much a gentleman as any one under your roof," I
returned, hotly.

"Heighty-tighty! what have we here?" the landlord said. "I forget. The
price is three dollars, and it's the last room in the house. I had
partly engaged it to a _gentleman_ in a cocked hat, but he has failed to
appear. Pay in advance, please, or you don't ship for the night."

I gave him one of the gold pieces. He slipped it into his pocket without
comment, and told the servant to show me up stairs. The room was quite
large and comfortable, the soft bed with the white sheets looked
inviting, and I was so stiff and tired from my walking that I tumbled
out of my clothes and drew the covers over me.

I thought that I should go to sleep at once, but as is often the case,
thoughts prevent the proper closing of the eyelids, as if they were the
doors of the mind. What was I to do on the morrow? It was full eight
days ahead of the time that I had promised to meet Plummer, and I had
but four gold pieces. A thrill of fright took hold of me when I thought
that perhaps my uncle might follow me and fetch me back with him. The
noise of shouting and loud talking below in the tap-room, and the
singing and chattering on the streets, continued for a long time; and I
tossed uneasily.

To the best of my recollection I had not lost myself in sleep at all
when I heard some stumbling and laughing out in the hall; then the door
to my room was pushed open, and a hand shielding a candle, the light of
which dazzled my eyes so that at first I could not see clearly, extended
through the doorway. A man entered, talking loudly to some one who was
following him.

"Come in, come in, Bullard; and don't drop that bottle for the life of
you."

A thick growling voice answered. "I've had all the bottle I want,
Captain Temple," were the words I caught, and the second man came in. He
also carried a candle.

"What is it you wish to discuss with me, sir, that we couldn't say
before McCulough?" he went on.

"It's just this," replied the one addressed as Captain Temple (I
recognized him as the officer who had sat on the piazza): "McCulough
thinks to tie us down in some way, because he happens to own a few
planks of the ship. Now I--"

The speaker had placed the light on the mantel-piece, and the other man
did the same with his candle, snuffing it a little with his fingers as
he did so; but what had broken off Captain Temple's speech was the sight
he had caught of me sitting bolt-upright in the bed and blinking, I dare
say, like a startled owl.

"In the name of Davy Jones, what is this?" he said. "What are you doing
in my room?"

"It's a drunken sailor-man," said the larger one, holding one of the
candles over his head. "Kick him out where he belongs. They're getting
too high and mighty, anyhow."

The Captain, seeing my bundle lying on the floor, sent it flying through
the open doorway down the hall, and the other man, with a stroke of his
foot, swept up the rest of my belongings.

"Get out of this, you swab!" said the Captain, "or I'll keelhaul you
well. No chin music, now! Come, get out!"

I was mighty angry by this time.

"I'm no swab or no drunken sailor, I'll have you understand," I replied;
"and this is my room, and I paid for it."

The Captain muttered a curse and the other man commenced to grin.

"I'll spit you like a goose!" the former roared. "How dare you talk to
me like that!"

He drew his sword and made one or two passes at me. Of course I do not
suppose it was his real intention to inflict an injury, but the point
came dangerously close to my throat. I had drawn the covers to my chin.

"Don't kill him, Captain; don't kill him," snickered the big one.

At this, moved by some impulse, I jumped to the floor. There was a
narrow poker leaning against the empty fireplace. Shaking with fear, I
picked it up and fell into the position of defence. The big man's
laughter changed to an impatient tone.

"Rout him out, the impudent rascal," he said, "and I'll boot him down
the stairway!"

The Captain could not reach me across the bed, so he came about the
foot-board. He made a quick pass at me as if he would give me a good
slap with the back of his sword. I parried it, and aiming a quick stroke
at his head, I sent his cocked hat flying across the room. His return to
this showed that he intended me some harm, for he lunged straight at my
breast. Again I parried, and a second time the Captain lunged. He had
gotten the point of his sword a little too far down this time, and I got
over it a bit with the poker. I remembered the disarming-stroke that my
uncle had shown me so often. With a quick turn of the wrist I caught his
blade aright and absolutely hurled it from his hand. It clattered across
the floor, and lunging forward, I caught him just below the shoulder
with the point of the poker. Had it been a cutlass or a small sword, it
would have surely run him through! As it was it staggered him, and he
sat down backwards in the empty fireplace.

The big man was roaring down the hallway for help, and I could hear a
charge being made up the stairs. The Captain looked up at me, however,
curiously.

"Where on the big green earth did you learn that?" he said.

I was so full of emotion and fear of the consequence of my action that I
could not speak, and stood there panting. A dozen faces had appeared at
the doorway. The Captain extended his hand.

"Give us a lift, lad," he said. "I'm badly grounded."

I pulled him out of the fireplace, and a strange picture we must have
presented, I in my shirt, and he slapping me good-naturedly between the
shoulders so hard that it set me coughing.

"No harm done, friends," he said, addressing the crowd, that had now
half filled the room. "Some pleasantry between me and this young
gentleman. Bullard, you old squillgee, gather the lad's trousseau from
the hall, and fetch it in here."

Affirming that it was just a joke, he and the Captain cleared the room
and gathered up my things. The short man was looking at me curiously.

"Gadzooks!" he said, "but that was a master-stroke! Who are you and
where do you come from?"

I was drawing on part of my clothing, and a fit of embarrassment had
hold of me. Now why I spoke as I did I cannot account for.

"My name is Debrin," I replied, taking the name that my uncle was known
by at Miller's Falls. "I've come to ship on board the _Young Eagle_. Cy
Plummer spoke to me about her."

The Captain threw back his head and laughed.

"You'll ship all right, lad. I'm Temple, of the _Young Eagle_. What's
your first name?"

"John," I answered.

"Go below, Bullard, and make out articles for this lad to sign--John
Debrin, instructor in small arms. Never knew of one in a privateer
before, but I'll create one."

Then and there he made me show him what I knew about handling a weapon.
In fact he treated me as if I were altogether his equal, and I soon lost
any feeling of discomforture. As this is the only time that I ever saw
Captain Temple in such a mood, I have dwelt on it. But to shorten this
part of my chronicle: I signed the articles that Bullard brought up with
him, and insisted upon giving up my room, which the Captain apparently
took with reluctance, and I slept on the floor in a corner of the
hallway.

From my clothes Temple must have judged me a seaman, for he asked no
questions on that head, and apparently was satisfied with the
explanation that I came from Chesapeake Bay, had sailed in the brig
_Minetta_, and had been taught swordsmanship by an old Frenchman.

I awakened in the morning with the puzzled consternation of one unused
to find himself in new surroundings, and with the feeling that last
night's goings-on had been a dream. A glance at the paper in my pocket,
however, proved that it was not.

A strange day was before me. I seemed destined in life to be a mystery
to the people whom I met, and circumstances kept up this position for
some time to come, as will be proven. The landlord and the serving-men
at the hotel treated me with such deference that had I been more of a
sailor-man and less of an innocent, my head might have been turned, and
I dare say I should have swaggered dreadfully--to be honest, I may have
done so as it was.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



THE SCIENTIFIC USE OF KITES.

BY H. H. CLAYTON,

OF THE BLUE HILL METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORY.


Kite-flying has been a pastime and a pleasure for many generations of
boys and, indeed, of men. In China and Malay it is one of the chief
sports for men. In China kites are made in strange and fantastic shapes,
and are flown in great numbers on fête-days and holidays. It seems
strange that some of the forms of Chinese and Malay kites were not long
ago imported and used by our boys.

[Illustration: METHOD OF FLYING SERIES OF KITES.]

But kites are useful for science as well as for sport; and this
scientific men are now finding out. Inventors and engineers have
discovered that kites present interesting problems for experiment and
study. Men who watch the air and the sky find that kites are useful in
getting records of what is going on far above the earth's surface.
Nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, in 1749, the idea of using kites
for a scientific study of the air occurred to two young men in Scotland.
They were Alexander Wilson and Thomas Melvill. They made half a dozen
large paper kites as strong and as light as the materials would permit.
They began by raising the smallest kite, which, being exactly balanced,
soon mounted steadily to its utmost limit, carrying up a line, very
slender, but of sufficient strength to command it. In the mean time the
second kite was made ready. Two assistants supported it in a sloping
direction between them, with its face to the wind, while a third person,
holding part of the line in his hand, stood at a good distance directly
in front. Then the extremity of the line belonging to the kite already
in the air was hooked to a loop at the back of the second kite, which,
being now let go, mounted superbly. In a little time it took up as much
line as could be supported with advantage, thereby allowing its
companion to soar at an elevation proportionately higher. All the kites
were sent up, one by one, in this manner, the upper kite reaching an
amazing height, according to the writer who described the experiment. It
disappeared at times among the white summer clouds. The pressure of the
breeze upon so many surfaces attached to the same line was found too
great for a single person to withstand, and it became necessary to keep
the mastery over the kites by additional help. In order to learn about
the warmth and the coolness of the air aloft, these young investigators
fastened thermometers to the kites. The thermometers had bushy tails of
paper, and were let fall from some of the higher kites by gradual
singeing of a match-line. However, these young men probably did not
learn much in this way, because a thermometer sinking slowly or rapidly
to the ground would change its temperature. The kites were found to be
capable of useful scientific work, but self-recording instruments to be
sent up with the kites were not then invented.

Two years later than the experiment described above, as every boy knows,
or ought to know, Benjamin Franklin, by sending up a kite during a
thunder-storm, and collecting a charge of electricity, proved that
electricity is the same as lightning.

For another hundred years kites were used only as toys. Then came the
present age of wonderful inventions, beginning about fifty years ago.
For the first time instruments were invented which could be lifted into
the air, and could make on a sheet of paper a record of all the changes
through which they passed while aloft. In 1883 Mr. E. Douglas Archibald,
in England, used kites for sending up instruments to measure how much
stronger the wind was aloft than near the ground. In 1890 Mr. McAdie
used kites as did Benjamin Franklin, in order to study the electricity
in the air. By sending kites tied to a string around which was wound
fine copper wire, he found that sparks would fly from the wire to his
finger, even when the sky was clear. When a thunder-storm came in sight
the sparks became so strong that it was thought best to bring the kites
down, on account of the danger. Within the last ten years M. Richard of
Paris, and Mr. Fergusson of Blue Hill Observatory, have made instruments
so simple and so light that at Blue Hill Observatory we now have
instruments weighing less than three pounds, which record on a single
sheet of paper how cool or warm the air is, how damp it is, how dense it
is, and how fast it moves. One of these instruments, lifted by several
kites all tied to the same line is easily sent up a mile or more above
the top of the hill from which the kites are flown. On August 1, 1896,
an instrument weighing three pounds was sent 6700 feet above the top of
Blue Hill, near Boston. It was then 7333 feet above the level of the
sea, or more than a thousand feet higher than the fop of Mount
Washington, the highest mountain in New England. The highest kite was
then higher than the instrument by more than a hundred feet.

[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN FROM A KITE ABOVE THE BLUE HILL
OBSERVATORY, MASSACHUSETTS.]

Mr. W. A. Eddy, of Bayonne, New Jersey, has used the kites successfully
at Blue Hill and at Boston for taking photographs of the surrounding
country from a height of several hundred feet in the air. The camera is
fastened to the kite-string, and the exposure of the plate is made by
pulling a second string which hangs from the camera to the ground. One
of the photographs, taken several hundred feet above Blue Hill, is shown
here. The picture gives the Blue Hill Observatory and the country for
several miles around.

Mr. J. Woodbridge Davis proposed to use kites for sending life-lines to
vessels wrecked near the coast, and devised kites for this purpose which
could be steered to any point nearly in a line with the wind.

[Illustration: HARGRAVE KITE IN THE AIR.]

The largest kite ever built was lately made by Mr. Lamson at Portland,
Maine. This kite was built on the plan of Hargrave's kite, shown in one
of our pictures, except that the cells were curved, and various other
improvements made in construction. This kite was 32 feet long, and had
900 square feet of surface. It weighed about 150 pounds, and lifted a
dummy-man weighing 150 pounds several hundred feet into the air. Then
the cord broke, and kite and dummy floated off into an adjacent swamp.

To see the air lift such weights astonishes most people, because in the
quiet of our rooms we move through the air without an effort, and it
even fails to support the lightest and downiest feather. But give the
air enough motion and it will lift anything made by man. In the terrific
wind of a tornado houses are lifted and burst like egg-shells. Even
locomotives are not too heavy for such winds to lift. A locomotive is
said to have been lifted in a tornado at St. Louis and carried fifteen
feet. At Blue Hill we find that the kites in a wind that blows 10 miles
an hour lift about two ounces for each square foot of surface; in a
25-mile wind they lifted about a pound for each square foot; and in a
40-mile wind, nearly three pounds for each square foot.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

The recent interest in kites has brought about a great improvement in
their forms. The Malays discovered that a diamond-shaped kite
constructed with two sticks could be made steady in the wind, and could
fly without a tail if the cross-sticks were bent backward and tied with
a cord so as to hold them in the shape of a bow. A writer in the
_American Boys' Handy-Book_ calls a kite of this form a Dutch kite,
indicating that it has been flown for a long time in Holland. Mr. W. A.
Eddy, of New Jersey, is one of the first persons who have attempted to
improve the kite for scientific use. He did this by making a kite with
the bowed cross-sticks longer and nearer the top than they are in the
Malay or the Dutch kite. Mr. Eddy's kite is illustrated in Fig. 1.

[Illustration: FIGS. 2, 3, 4.]

To make a kite of this kind five feet tall the sticks should be about
1/2 by 3/8 inch cross-section if only two sticks are to be used; but if
they are to be strengthened by cross-sticks, as is done at Blue Hill,
they should be about 3/4-inch wide and 1/4-inch thick. These sticks can
easily be sawed out of a board of the proper thickness. A B and C D
should each be 60 inches in length. C E should be 18 per cent. of C D;
that is, in a five-foot kite A B should cross C D 10.8 inches below the
top of C D. O is the centre of gravity, or the point where the kite
balances when supported on the finger. It is placed about 35 per cent.
of the distance from C to D. In the simplest form of construction A B is
bent backward like a cross-bow (see Fig. 2), and tied so that the
deepest part of the bow is about one-tenth of the length of A B. The
lower part of the kite should be strung first, and the eye should not be
trusted to make A D and B D equal. The distance should be carefully
measured, because the success of the kite depends on the exactness of
these proportions. In bending A B great care is required to make the
bend on one side of the point of junction at E exactly symmetrical with
the other bend. The slight bagging inward of the covering of the
triangle A E D should be equal to the bagging of B E D. If the kite
flies sidewise, owing to inequality in the two sides, it can be partly
remedied by tying half-ounce or quarter-ounce weights at A or B. If A
should swing too far to the left, tie the weight at B. If B should swing
too far to the right, tie the weight at A. The hanger should be tied in
front of the kite at E and D, and when pulled sidewise should extend
nearly to B, and have a loop or ring tied in it an inch or two inches
below B for the kite line. To make Eddy's kite strong and trustworthy, a
more complex method of building it, adopted by Mr. Fergusson at Blue
Hill, is as follows:

[Illustration: FIG. 5.]

A drawing of the actual size of the kite is made on a floor or a table,
and four screws are driven into the positions occupied by the corners,
leaving the heads projecting about a quarter-inch. The cloth covering is
then stretched over the floor or table, and tacked down several inches
outside of the edge of the kite, as outlined by the screws. A piece of
cord for the edge is then passed around the outside of the screws, drawn
tight, and tied at the top by a square bow-knot. A knot is also made
just below each of the corners at the sides so that when the cover is
transferred from the floor to the sticks the knot will prevent the ends
of the cross-sticks from slipping downward, because that is the cause of
most of the trouble due to bad balancing. The cover is then pasted to
the cord, a lap of about one inch being sufficient, and the cord is left
bare at each corner where it passes over the screws. It is well first to
wet with water the part of the cloth which is to be pasted, and the
paste should be rubbed into every part of the cloth, and a smooth seam
should be made. The cover should not be removed from the screws until
perfectly dry. While it is drying, the kite-frame can be made. The
upright stick is made of two flat sticks fastened at right angles to
each other, so as to form a T; that is, they have that appearance when
looked at endwise. (See bottom of Fig. 4.) The two sticks are glued to
each other, and then firmly lashed. For the cross-stick A B two sticks
set at an angle to each other are used instead of a single bowed stick.
The method of making the angle joint is shown in Figs. 3 and 4. In a
piece of square brass tubing, B, is cut a slot, into which fits the
upright stick, C D. The tubing is then bent around the upright stick,
C D, to the angle desired; a piece of wood, E, is fitted to the angle,
and the whole is firmly lashed together. The ends A and B of the two
arms of the cross-stick are driven into the ends of the tubing and
strengthened by a brace, F. The frame is then ready for the cover, and
the proportions are the same as those of the kite with two sticks. The
ends of the sticks are notched to receive the loops of cord left at the
corners of the cover, and the cover is slipped over the frame with the
knots at A and B beneath the ends of the stick. The cord in the cover
should then be lashed to the sticks, except at C (Fig. 1), and coated
with glue, in order to prevent the cover from drawing away from the
corners. The cord at C is left free to permit adjusting the tension of
cover and string by retying when necessary. These kites will fly without
a tail, but they are much steadier and better if flown with a tail, like
the one invented by Mr. Archibald. This tail does not act by its weight,
since it should weigh only one or two ounces, but by the pressure of the
wind on it. It is made of two or three cloth cones joined to each other
and to the end of the kite at D (Fig. 1) by a fine cord. The front of
each cone is made of a wire ring, stiff enough to hold its shape, and
two cross-braces of wire, or two cross-strings, as shown in Fig. 5. The
tail string is tied to the braces in the centre of the ring, and passes
down through the end of the cone, and several feet beyond it, where a
second cone may be attached. To make the kite lift well, and to fly it
in wet weather, it is best to cover the cloth and sticks with varnish
which is mixed with rubber to make it elastic, as suggested by Dr.
Stanton. The following proportions are used at Blue Hill: Pure rubber,
shredded, 2 ounces; bisulphide of carbon, 2 to 4 pounds. When the rubber
is dissolved, this solution is mixed with spar-varnish in the proportion
of 2 pounds of the solution to 1 pound of varnish, and thinned with
turpentine. Apply a small quantity at a time, evenly distributed, and
give two or three coats.

A new form of kite was invented a few years ago by Mr. Hargrave, an
Australian inventor, who is devising a flying-machine. A picture of a
Hargrave kite floating in the air, taken from a photograph made by Mr.
Alexander McAdie, is shown in the illustration. In this kite the wind
acts on a number of thin strips rather than on a single broad surface,
and at the same time it gets steadiness of flight by putting the planes
in pairs in two directions, and adding side planes. The general
principles to be remembered are to have the width of the kite
five-sixths of its length, the width of the cells a little less than a
third of the length of the kite, and the depth of the cells the same as
their width. The description of Hargrave's improved kite appeared in
1895. Since then numerous forms having something of his principle have
been invented. The most interesting are Lamson's multiplane and schooner
kites, Potter's diamond kite, and Hammon's hemispherical kite, all shown
in the illustrations. No tails are used with any of these kites.

Mr. Hargrave's kite is complex, and not easy to build. Simpler forms of
the frame have been used at Blue Hill, but probably the simplest and
best frame is that devised by Mr. S. C. Keith, Jun., and described here
for the benefit of those boys who may wish to try one.

The cells have the same shape and appearance as Hargrave's kite, shown
in the picture, but the frame is different.

[Illustration]

Fig. 6 is a plan of the kite; Fig. 7 is a side view; and Fig. 8 an end
view. In Figs. 6 and 7 the stick M N is 66 inches long, and has a
cross-section of 1/2 by 3/8 of an inch. At C D and A B are cross-sticks,
two at each place. An end view, at A B, is shown in Fig. 8. The
cross-sticks A F and B E are 33 inches long, and 3/8 inch square, or
even smaller. Small screw-eyes like those used in hanging pictures are
screwed into the ends of each stick. Pass a strong wire or cord--steel
piano-wire is best--through the screw-eyes at A B E and F (Fig. 8), and
fasten it firmly at the corners by a cord, or otherwise, making A E and
B F 14 inches, and A B and E F about 30 inches. Next pass a wire from M
through the screw-eyes at C and A to N (Fig. 6), and then on through F
and G (Fig. 7) to M again, and fasten it. Pass a similar wire on the
opposite side of the kite from M through D B N, etc., to M, and fasten
it. These wires, and also the wire around A B E and F (Fig. 8), should
be light. It is best to have turn-buckles at some point in each wire, so
that it can be tightened after it is in place. Since the sticks at
A E F B and C D G are liable to slip along the wire, it is necessary to
hold them by stays tied to M and N. The cells are made of cloth
(nainsook being the best). After the cloth is folded over at the edges,
and hemmed or pasted, it is in two strips, each 14 inches wide and 90
inches long, so that the strips will pass entirely around the kite-frame
and form two cells, D P and R B (Fig. 7). The distances from the line
B F to N, and from the line D G to M, is 9 inches, and the distance P to
R is 20 inches. The cloth, after being fastened around the kites, should
be tight and smooth. This can be obtained best by putting lacing-strings
in the edges, and making the cloth 3 or 4 inches shorter than the
measure given above--say 86 inches. The cloth should then be fastened to
the corners of the sticks, and also to the wire which passes around the
kite at C D and A B. Next, the edges of the two cells should be laced
together all around by cords running across from one to the other, as
shown by the dotted lines in Fig. 6. To fly the kite, tie a strong cord
at M, and also at the other end, where M N joins the cross-sticks which
run from B and F. (See the broken line in Fig. 7) Tie a ring or a
loop-knot at O at the rear edge of the cell D P (Fig. 7). Or the hanger
may be tied at M, and brought down under the cell D P. In that case the
ring O should come farther forward. It also insures steadiness to run
two strings from O, one to F, and the other to E. The kite-string is
tied in O.

The best material for the construction of a kite is straight-grained
spruce. The best covering is bond paper, nainsook, or silk.



THE PINGRA POL.

BY ALLAN FORMAN.


"Shall we visit the Pingra Pol to-day?" said my Parsi friend, who was
hospitably showing me the sights of Bombay.

"Oh, certainly!" I replied, with alacrity, though I had very vague
notions as to what a Pingra Pol might be, and cherished a hazy idea that
he was some sort of dignitary of the Hindoo Church, an archbishop or the
like.

"You know what the Pingra Pol is?" queried my friend, as we seated
ourselves on the cushions of his neat little gharry behind a team of
spotless white bullocks not much larger than calves. Our driver, clad in
flowing white garments and an enormous white turban, was seated in front
of us astride the tongue, and seemed to guide his animals by patting
them on the flanks. The willing little beasts started off on a brisk
trot in the direction of the native city, and my friend repeated his
question.

"So you do not know what the Pingra Pol is?" he said, smiling.

"I have not the slightest idea," I replied.

"It is our hospital for worn-out and disabled animals, and it is one of
the oldest and most extensive charities in the world. In your country,
if an animal breaks its leg or otherwise injures itself, you kill it to
'put it out of its misery'; we hold that life is sweet to even the
humblest of God's creatures, and that we have no right to take away that
which we cannot give again. So, instead of killing our disabled animals,
we care for them until they die a natural death. This is a part of the
religion of all Hindoos, but some sects are much more strict in their
observance than others. The Jains, for example, will turn out of their
way on the street to avoid stepping on a bug or a worm, and after going
to the temple they wear a cloth across their mouths until sunset, that
they may not breathe in any living creature."

While he was talking we had been trotting rapidly through the narrow
streets of the native city, past gorgeous Buddhist temples, the gay
residences of the wealthy Hindoos, and the tiny shops and squalid huts
of the poorer people. At last we came to a high wall of dried clay which
surrounded an enclosure of about ten acres. On one side was a great
gateway, devoid of ornamentation, but forming a resting-place for scores
of monkeys. Little monkeys and big monkeys; busy, nervous mother
monkeys, at their wits' ends to keep their lively youngsters out of
trouble; and gray, dignified grandfather monkeys, who looked down upon
us as if they were proprietors and managers of the whole busy scene.
Myriads of little green parrots screeched and swung in the trees which
overhung the wall, and blue pigeons plumed themselves in the sunshine.
Through the gateway came the lowing of cattle, the yelping of dogs, the
quacking of ducks, and a strange medley of noises that sounded like a
barn-yard gone mad.

We alighted, and passing through the gateway, where we were provided
with a guide and a quantity of "gram"--a peculiar native grain which
tastes something like pea-nuts--we proceeded to make the rounds of this
strange hospital. A dozen or more camels with broken legs, ragged and
disreputable looking, glowered at us with evil eyes.

The natives say that a camel's greatest delight consists in biting a
man; they can kick, too, in a way that would make an American army mule
blush with envy; but they enjoy biting better; they can then witness the
pain of their victim, while if they only kick him they have to go over
to an adjoining county to view the remains, and a camel hates to exert
himself. From all I have been told, I judge that a camel is a very
even-tempered animal--always ugly.

[Illustration: A CAMEL IS A VERY EVEN-TEMPERED ANIMAL--ALWAYS UGLY.]

From the camels we pass on to the horses, about three hundred of them,
housed in comfortable box-stalls around the walls. Dainty Arab ponies,
sleek and well kept, but with a leg dangling limp and useless. They
crowd about you for caresses, for the Arab pony is a pet by long
generations of breeding, and he craves attention like a house cat,
rubbing against you, and pleading with his soft brown eyes for a lump of
sugar or a bit of salt. Great rawboned "Walers," as the horses which are
imported from Australia for the use of the English army are called,
stand side by side with the shaggy rough little hill ponies, which are
apt to be vicious, and make but a poor showing in comparison with the
lovable, graceful Arabs. Some dozens of gray donkeys, looking as forlorn
and dejected as only donkeys can look, yet fat, sleek, and lazy,
complete the equine section.

All this time we have been threading our way among broken-legged and
broken-winged ducks, cats of all sizes, ages, and colors, and in all
stages of decrepitude, solemn storks standing on one leg, gulls fighting
over some scrap of food that has been thrown to them, tiny striped
squirrels scampering up and down the trees, pigeons without number, and
monkeys everywhere. It seemed to me that there were enough monkeys to
stock all the menageries in the world.

The monkeys, the gulls, the parrots, the storks, and the squirrels are
not legitimate occupants of the Pingra Pol, but they have discovered a
place where they are kindly treated and well fed, and where that
despised and detested creature, man, has to turn out for them instead of
making them fly or scamper out of his way, and they are not slow to
realize its advantages. One has to witness it to appreciate the
malicious joy a bedraggled stork can find in standing directly in the
middle of the path and refusing to budge while the unfortunate human
carefully skirts round his storkship in the mud. Then the bird raises
his head, ruffles, out his neck feathers, and winks a wicked wink of
triumph, and you feel that they make entirely too much of animals in
India.

But we have not nearly finished the Pingra Pol yet. From the horse
enclosure we pass into a much larger court, devoted to animals of the
cow kind. Here are upwards of fifteen hundred water-buffaloes,
trotting-bullocks, sacred Brahmin cows, oxen, some deer and antelope,
and innumerable goats. With the exception of the water-buffaloes, the
motley collection is hardly worth looking at; they are fat, lazy, and
appear to be perfectly contented. The water-buffaloes, which I recently
saw described at a travelling circus as "the ferocious Bovapulous from
the jungles of India," is a most grotesque beast--a smooth skin of faded
black with hardly a hair on it, stretched over so clumsy a carcass that
it looks as if it were badly stuffed, a great head bearing a pair of the
most ferociously villanous horns, and lit up by as mild a pair of light
blue eyes as ever beamed from the countenance of a Quaker. The
combination of the piratical horns and the peaceful eyes gives the beast
a strange, contradictory appearance. It is a harmless creature, and when
not wallowing in the mud, it trudges patiently after its owner from
house to house, and furnishes the best milk procurable in India, unless
you happen to have the rare good fortune to secure the produce of an
imported English cow. These poor beasts are almost all broken-legged,
and while it is satisfactory to see that they apparently suffer no pain,
they are too contented to rouse much sympathy.

With the dogs, however, it is different. There are three or four hundred
of them confined in great cages in a large court-yard, and they are the
only occupants of the Pingra Pol who do not seem satisfied to remain
there. They are all yearning for human companionship, and the barks and
yelps which greet the visitor as he passes their cages are most pitiful.
"Take me away with you; I will be a good dog for you; take me with you,"
is the burden of the canine chorus, and the expression of dull despair
that succeeds the hope that lights each doggy face is enough to melt the
heart of the most rabid dog-hater. There are a few good dogs
here--setters, Great Danes, and mastiffs, and other imported animals
which have been injured and sent here by their owners--but the most of
them are what are known in India as "dogs of sorts," meaning all sorts,
or, as a friend of mine said, "the most thoroughbred mongrels he ever
saw." But some of these mongrel curs make the most faithful and
affectionate canine companions, and it is surprising the accession of
dignity and self-importance that will come to the humblest "yaller
purp" of the streets when he is adopted by a good master. The English
residents use the native mongrels to hunt jackals, as they use
fox-hounds for foxes in England, and the pluck and endurance of the
unpromising-looking beasts surprise a good many Englishmen who have been
used to hunting behind the carefully bred fox-hounds of the
mother-country.

But a globe-trotter can't be encumbered with pets, and we pick our way
out of the Pingra Pol, carefully avoiding the ducks, pigeons, and other
small fry which squat unconcernedly in our path, and dodging as best we
can the sticks and straws which the ever-active monkeys try to drop on
our heads.

"Well, what do you think of one of the oldest charities in the world?"
inquired my Parsi friend, as we passed through the gateway and seated
ourselves in the bullock gharry.

"It is very interesting, but it must cost a deal of money to keep all
those animals after they have ceased to be of any use," I answered.

"Yes; but we cannot kill them, and if one recovers so that it can be
worked, or if there is healthy increase, they are given to deserving
persons who will treat them kindly. The Pingra Pol is supported by
voluntary contributions from the Jains, Parsis, and other Hindoo sects;
there are others in Ahmedabad, Jeypoor, and other large cities. In
Ahmedabad, which is the headquarters of the Jain sect, they have a
building for fleas. When a pious Jain catches a flea among his scanty
garments, he does not do as you cruel Occidentals do, ruthlessly crush
the poor insect. Oh no! He carefully carries it to the Pingra Pol, and
deposits it in the flea-house, where every day a brawny coolie is paid
to spend a few hours and give the inmates a square meal," and my friend
laughed as if he were not in thorough sympathy with the extreme customs
of the Jains.

I found subsequently that this same regard for animal life extends all
over India. The monkey, the gray crow, and the green parrot ravage the
gardens and fields undisturbed save by ineffectual scarecrows.
Occasionally a house-servant would catch a crow and wire a soda cork on
his bill, but I fancy that the crows regarded it as a mark of
distinction; the wild peacocks committed such depredations in the
vicinity of Jeypoor that the people were obliged to employ double sets
of watchers to drive the birds out of their gardens. And in Agra the
monkeys became such a nuisance that the native merchants joined
together, chartered a train of flat cars, which they plentifully covered
with gram, and when the train was well loaded with monkeys busily
engaged in eating, they ran it up country into the jungle about two
hundred miles. I am assured, however, on the authority of a Judge of the
Supreme Court of India, that the monkeys, like the cat, came back, and
that each brought with him seven new chums who had been lured from their
native jungle by tales of city life as told by the involuntary
wanderers. I will not vouch for the accuracy of the figures of my friend
the Judge, but I did not miss any monkeys in Agra or any other part of
India. But while the monkeys and birds are a nuisance, it is far
pleasanter to see them taken care of than killed in wanton cruelty, for
"sport."



[Illustration: INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORT]


After a season that has been unusual in more respects than one, the New
York Interscholastic football games have come to an end, and De La Salle
stands as the champion of the League. The final game was played on the
Berkeley Oval, a week ago Saturday, between De La Salle and Trinity, the
former winning by a score of 2-0.

[Illustration: FINAL GAME OF THE NEW YORK INTERSCHOLASTIC FOOTBALL
ASSOCIATION.

De La Salle has the ball on Trinity's 10-yard line.]

[Illustration: THE DE LA SALLE INSTITUTE FOOTBALL TEAM.]

The grounds were in miserable condition, and the last part of the game
was played in total darkness. The only scoring that was done occurred in
the first half. De La Salle made a succession of gains through Trinity's
left tackle, and got the ball to within a couple of yards of the line,
when it went to her opponents on downs. Page was then tried for a centre
play in an attempt to get the leather out of danger, but De La Salle
proved equal to the emergency, and forced her opponents over the line
for a safety.

The play in the second half was hard and fast. The ball was kept moving
up and down the field with rapidity. But it soon became almost
impossible for the men to do any kind of systematic work, owing to
darkness, and the game degenerated into a series of blind scrimmages,
from which no one profited, until time was called.

The football season in Wisconsin has come to an end, and the Madison
High-School can claim the honor of having defeated every high-school
team it has met this year. Madison defeated Minneapolis, 21-0, and on
Thanksgiving day routed an eleven who appeared to represent the Hyde
Park High-School of Chicago, 22-0. The Hyde Park team was likewise
defeated on the following day by a combination team from the Milwaukee
East and South Side High-Schools, 12-0. In this last game Milwaukee made
long gains through centre and tackles, but was unable to make any
headway around the ends. The score would doubtless have been greater
except for the fact that fifteen-minute halves were played. The best
work for Milwaukee was done by Tuttrup, full-back, and Collins, centre.

Now that the Cook County High-School Association's football season is
closed, the Chicago athletes will turn their attention to in-door
baseball. Representatives from the Englewood, Austin, Lakeview,
Evanston, English, North Division, and Hyde Park High-Schools met
recently, and made preliminary arrangements for an in-door baseball
championship series. Austin won the pennant last year, and hopes to be
successful again this season. Its most formidable opponents will
probably be Lakeview and North Division. Englewood has never before been
represented in the in-door baseball contests, and Hyde Park has not even
yet set about organizing a team. Nevertheless, the interest in the game
will doubtless insure a successful season.

[Illustration: CLINTON (IOWA) HIGH-SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM.]

The Clinton High-School football team is undoubtedly the strongest
scholastic eleven in Iowa. Its record this season is one that it may
well feel proud of; and although nine games were scheduled early in the
season, and only two were played, it was not the fault of Clinton that
this was the case. In the first game Clinton defeated the Savannah,
Illinois, H.-S., 56-0; the second game was against Cornell College, of
Mount Vernon, Iowa, and resulted in a tie, neither side scoring.

When the high-school teams of Moline, Davenport, Dubuque, Sterling,
Dickson, and Rock Island learned of the prowess of the Clintonians, they
backed out of their scheduled games, and Clinton was left without any
opponents. The Cornell team ranks third among the colleges of Iowa, and
averages 170 pounds.

The average weight of the Clinton H.-S. eleven is 157, with 160 pounds
average for the backs. Keister, left half-back, is probably the best
player on the eleven; he is a sure tackler and a strong ground-gainer.
Holmes, at right guard, weighs 181 pounds, and knows his position
thoroughly. He tackles well, and has great skill in breaking through the
opposing line. He proved himself capable, also, running with the ball,
and made frequent gains around the ends in practice. Verrien, at
full-back, is a new man, but he punts well, and should develop into a
good line-bucker. It is to be hoped that next year Clinton will be more
successful in securing opponents who care to play football for the sake
of the game rather than for the satisfaction of victory.

Although athletics have not yet reached that stage of development in
Cleveland to which they have attained in many other cities of equal
size, yet there is a lively interest in schoolboys' sport there, and for
the past two years a football league has been in operation. In 1895 it
was composed of the Central High-School, the University School, the West
High-School, the South High-School, and the Freshman teams of the
Western Reserve University and of the Case School of Applied Science.

This year, however, some wise sportsman must have informed the
schoolboys of the absurdity and inadvisability of having such a mongrel
combination of schools and colleges, for during the football season the
association consisted only of the Central High and University Schools.
The former has the advantage in numbers, there being about eight hundred
scholars enrolled; but the University School, with about two hundred
boys, has the advantage of being a private school with greater resources
at its command.

The championship game of football was played this year on a very muddy
field, but both teams had had good coaching and put up good sport. A
feature of the game was a goal from the field by Ammon of the University
School, the first performance of the kind ever witnessed in the City of
Cleveland. The final score was 12-9 in favor of the Central High-School,
but it is said that this score does not show how close the game actually
was, the University School having missed winning by the failure of a
foot for a second goal from the field. Most of C.H.-S.'s gains were made
through right tackle, and the High-School players resorted almost
entirely to a rushing game. The University School players, on the other
hand, kicked a great deal, and as Ammon is probably one of the cleverest
punters and drop-kickers of any of the schools of the West, this style
of play proved most effective for that side.

The senior interscholastic football season in Boston was brought to a
close last week in a manner that was somewhat unlooked for. The
unexpected was due to the action of the Executive Committee of the
Association at its last meeting. At the opening of the football season,
early in the fall, it was announced that all the teams must strictly
obey not only the letter, but the spirit of the Constitution, and they
were warned that they must take the consequences if the rules were not
thoroughly lived up to.

As a result, however, of the game played on November 14, between
Hopkinsons and Cambridge Manual-Training School, a protest was entered
against C.M.-T.S., and charges were made that their team had violated
one of the Articles of the Constitution. When the protest came up for
decision before the committee, to which all such matters are referred,
the committee decided that while the intention of C.M.-T.S. was not of a
malicious nature, the situation, nevertheless, was too grave to admit of
any alternative but that of depriving Cambridge of the game and of
awarding it to Hopkinsons.

This decision would give the championship, then, to Hopkinsons. But the
captain of the Hopkinson football team refused to accept an honor gained
on a technicality of the Constitution, and declined to take advantage of
the committee's decision. The committee, therefore, voted that no
championship should be awarded for the season of 1896.

In the past few years the rules of the Constitution have not always been
rigidly enforced or stringently lived up to, and the sudden change of
affairs has rather surprised the League members who supposed the lines
would not be drawn so closely. At the present time, when some of the
teams seem to be not satisfied to settle disputes on the gridiron, but
seek rather to fall back on the Executive Committee, it has become
necessary to strictly enforce the most insignificant clause of the
Constitution.

The Cambridge Manual episode has attracted considerable attention in the
Boston Interscholastic League, and while the result is a most severe
lesson to that school, and possibly out of proportion to the offence
alleged to have been committed, the result will be that in future years
there will be less unnecessary action for the Executive Board, and the
schools will learn to adhere to the clauses as set down in their
Constitution.

In spite of Cambridge Manual's misfortune at the close of the season,
her record of play has been rather exceptional during the playing weeks.
One noticeable feature has been that C.M.-T.S. has scored the first goal
from the field since 1891, when Moore, C.M.-T.S., kicked one, as he did
also the previous year. Considerable attention has been given by the
Cambridge team this fall to the development of a kicking game, and good
results have followed. It is asserted that they have never had a kick
blocked, and there seems to be little doubt that Sawin, the captain of
the eleven, is the best kicker in the League.

Another feature of Manual-Training's game has been their system of
interference, which proved particularly effective, and the backs have
been drilled to hurdle the pile after the interference had been broken,
and thus frequently to gain an extra couple of yards. The C.M.-T.S.
manner of defence was likewise a strong one, and although outweighed man
for man by a number of the teams against which they played, the
Cambridge eleven proved themselves capable of forcing their opponents to
kick or to surrender the ball time and time again.

RECORDS OF THE N. E. FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION.

                                            T
                                            '
                                G           c
                                o           h     S
                                a           -     a
                                l           d     f
                                s           o     e
                                            w     t           T
                                f     G     n     i     T     o
                                r     o     s     e     o     t
                                o     a           s     t     a
                                m     l     f           a     l
                                      s     a     b     l
                                T           i     y           P
                                o     f     l           P     o         G
                                u     r     i     O     o     i    G    a
                                c     o     n     p     i     n    a    m
                                h     m     g     p     n     t    m    e
                                -                 o     t     s    e    s
                                d     F     G     n     s          s
                                o     i     o     e           L         L
                                w     e     a     n     W     o    W    o
                                n     l     l     t     o     s    o    s
        Teams                   s     d     s     s     n     t    n    t

  1888.

  Cambridge H. and L.          20    ..     4    ..   136    ..    6    0
  Boston Latin                 12    ..    17    ..   140    15    5    1
  Roxbury Latin                10    ..     1     1    66    56    4    2
  English High                  2    ..     2    ..    20    78    2    3
  Stone, Nichols, and Hales     4    ..     5     1    46    52    1    3
  Hopkinson's                   1    ..     3    ..    18   126    1    5
  Nobles                       ..     1     1    ..     9   108    0    3

  1889.

  Cambridge H. and L.          11     3     6    ..   105    16    3    0
  English High                  3    ..     7    ..    46    32    2    1
  Boston Latin                  7    ..     4    ..    58    20    2    2
  Roxbury Latin                 4    ..    ..    ..    24    68    2    2
  Hopkinson's                   1    ..    ..    ..     6   103    0    4

  1890.

  Cambridge H. and L.          10    ..     8    ..    91    35    5    1
  English High                 10    ..     7    ..    88    26    4    1
  Hopkinson's                   7    ..     8    ..    74    52    3    2
  Manual-Training               6     1     4    ..    57    48 (1)1    3
  Roxbury Latin                 5    ..     5     1    52    80    1    4
  Boston Latin                 ..    ..    ..    ..    ..   122    0 (1)4

  1891.

  Hopkinson's                  17    ..     7    ..   130     4    4    0
  Manual-Training               9     1     5    ..    79    56    2    2
  English High                  2    ..    12    ..    60    48    2    2
  Boston Latin                  4    ..     2    ..    32    58    2    2
  Cambridge H. and L.          ..    ..    ..    ..    ..   135    0    4

  1892.

  Hopkinson's                  12    ..     4    ..    88     8    4    0
  Manual-Training               2    ..     3    ..    24    34    1 (2)1
  English High                  5    ..     4    ..    46    52    2 (1)1
  Cambridge H. and L.           1    ..     1    ..    10    34    1 (1)2
  Boston Latin                  2    ..     1    ..    16    56    0    4

  1893.

  English High                 11    ..     3    ..    78    56 (3)4 (2)0
  Manual-Training              19    ..     5    ..   134    28 (3)4    1
  Boston Latin                  3    ..     3    ..    30    68    2    3
  Newton High                  10    ..     3    ..    72    88    2    3
  Cambridge H. and L.           5    ..     1    ..    34    78    1 (2)2
  Hopkinson's                   5    ..     6    ..    54    84    0 (2)4

  1894.

  Manual-Training               9    ..     5    ..    74    ..    4    0
  English High                 11    ..     2    ..    68    26    3    2
  Cambridge H. and L.           2    ..     1    ..    16    98    2    3
  Hopkinson's                   5    ..     3    ..    42    16    2    3
  Boston Latin                  3    ..     1    ..    22    32    2    3
  Newton High                   1    ..     2    ..    14    58    1    3

  1895.

  English High                  4    ..    12    ..    56    14    5    0
  Boston Latin                  2    ..     2     1    14    10 (3)3    2
  Hopkinson's                   6    ..     7    ..    40    36    3    2
  Cambridge H. and L.           1    ..     1     1     8    40 (4)1    3
  Brookline High                3    ..     4    ..    22    16 (5)1    3
  Manual-Training               1    ..     3    ..    14    36 (6)0    3

  1896.

  Manual-Training              12     1     3     1    91     6    4    1
  Hopkinson's                   8    ..     4    ..    64    21 (1)3    1
  Brookline High                5    ..     1    ..    34    30 (1)3    1
  English High                  4    ..     2    ..    22    12 (2)2    1
  Boston Latin                  6    ..     1    ..    40    64    1    4
  Cambridge H. and L.          ..    ..    ..    ..    ..   128    0    5

Note: (1) One tied. (2) Two tied. (3) Forfeited. (4) One tied and
protested. (5) Protested.

An interesting table of records is printed with this issue of the
Department because it must prove valuable as statistics for reference; a
few points of further statistical information may likewise prove of
value: since the Interscholastic League was first started, in 1888, the
greatest number of points piled up by any single team is 140. This total
score was made by the Boston Latin School in 1888. In the same year
Cambridge High and Latin made a total of 136 points, and was not scored
against in any of the championship games.

The record also shows that only six safeties have been made in the
League games since they were first started--two in 1888, one in 1890,
two in 1895, and one this fall. Only seven goals from the field have
been kicked during these nine years; this includes those mentioned
above.

The standing of the teams in the Senior League and those in both
divisions of the Junior League follow:

SENIOR LEAGUE.

                             Games    Games    Games    Points    Points
                              won.    lost.    tied.     won.      lost.
  Hopkinson's                  4        0        1        64         21
  Brookline High               3        1        1        34         30
  Cambridge Manual             3        2        0        91          2
  English High                 2        1        2        32         12
  Boston Latin                 1        4        0        40         64
  Cambridge High and Latin     0        5        0         0        128

JUNIOR LEAGUE.

Division A.

  Hyde Park High               3        0        1        52         22
  Roxbury Latin                2        1        1        44         30
  Dedham High                  0        2        0         4         22
  Dorchester High              0        2        0         4         30

Division B.

  Somerville High              4        0        0        90          6
  Medford High                 3        1        0        60         28
  Newton High                  1        2        0        30         46
  Chelsea High                 0        2        0         2         46
  Nobles and Greenoughs        0        3        0         0         56

FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP.

  Somerville High        12--Hyde Park High                6

SCORE OF GAMES PLAYED.

  Hopkinson's            34--Cambridge High and Latin      0
  (1)Hopkinson's          0--Cambridge Manual             15
  Hopkinson's            14--Boston Latin                  6
  Hopkinson's             0--English High                  0
  Hopkinson's            16--Brookline High                0
  Brookline High          6--Cambridge Manual              2
  Brookline High         12--Cambridge High and Latin      0
  Brookline High         10--Boston Latin                  6
  Brookline High          6--English High                  6
  Cambridge Manual        6--English High                  0
  Cambridge Manual       34--Boston Latin                  0
  Cambridge Manual       34--Cambridge High and Latin      0
  English High           20--Cambridge High and Latin      0
  English High            6--Boston Latin                  0
  Boston Latin           28--Cambridge High and Latin      0

Note: (1) Game given to Hopkinson's by action of the Executive
Committee.

Unless something unforeseen occurs to prevent, the All-Connecticut
Interscholastic Football Team, and in all probability the All-New-York
Interscholastic Football Team, will be announced in the next number of
the ROUND TABLE.

"FOOTBALL FACTS AND FIGURES."--BY WALTER CAMP.--POST 8VO, PAPER, 75
CENTS.

  THE GRADUATE.



ADVERTISEMENTS.



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[Illustration]

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ROYAL BAKING POWDER CO., NEW YORK.



HIS FAULT.

An amusing and eccentric character hangs around a celebrated inn up in
the White Mountains which is frequented by authors, artists, and
professional men. He is a shrewd fellow, and earns many a dollar by his
wit. One of the new arrivals, noticing him one day, inquired who he was,
and upon being informed of his wit, opened a conversation which went
somewhat as follows:

"Find much to do here in summer?"

"Yaas," replied the wit. "I'm writin' er book."

"Are you, indeed? What's it about?"

The wit shifted over to his other foot, and looking mysteriously at the
veranda full of people, said, "It's about the faults of celebrated men."

"Ah! And I dare say you have us all in it. Now, for instance, myself?"

"Yaas, you're there." And here he opened a greasy little leather blank
book, and thumbed over the pages until he came to the entry he wanted,
and then read: "'Mr. B----, the celebrated author. Fault committed
yesterday, the 3d. Gave ten dollars to a messenger going to town, and
instructed said messenger to buy sundry things for him.'"

"Humph! Why do you call that a fault?"

"Waal, it's this way. I reckon that messenger will steal your money and
won't return."

"But suppose he does?"

"Then I'll have to scratch your name out and put his in its place; but I
feel in my bones that yer the man that'll be at fault."



QUESTIONS FOR YOUNG MEN.

ON GOING TO COLLEGE.


One of the professors of Harvard University once said, in a lecture,
that many young men made a great mistake in going to college; that a
university was for students, and for students only; and that if a boy
were not of a studious turn of mind it was more than likely that he
would waste his time for four years that could be put to better
advantage in some mercantile business.

The time for such ideas has gone into history with other ideas of a
similar nature, such as the buying and selling of slaves, and the pride
noblemen used to feel in not being able to read or write. A college
education is quite different from acquiring knowledge at a college. For
instance, you may be attending a preparatory school at this moment, and
are considering what courses of study you will pursue in order to obtain
a "college education." What do you find at Harvard? There are some two
hundred different courses to choose from, and by choosing sixteen or
seventeen, and taking four or four and a half a year, at the end of four
years you will, if the examinations are passed satisfactorily, obtain a
degree of A. B., which in the common phrase signifies that you have
obtained an education. And yet you have studied only sixteen or
seventeen out of the two hundred preliminary courses that lead up to a
real education. In fact, when these four years are done you have only
just begun! And therefore the actual study covered amounts to little.

What has been accomplished, however, is the study and practice of how to
learn, and how to go to work to get an education. You have learned how
to start on any subject, whether it be the selling and buying of leather
and tin goods, or the teaching of boys' schools, or the science of
biology. Little information has been acquired, but you have at least
learned how to attack any subject.

Furthermore, you have come from your home, wherever that may be, have
met other fellows, have joined them in studies, in sports, in clubs, and
in societies; and under the guidance of a carefully selected body of
instructors and authorities you have learned how to take care of
yourself in emergencies of all kinds, how to read, how and what to
study, how to treat men and women--even how to fight when that becomes
necessary; and whether you decide to take up further study or mercantile
business, the result is the same. You know men, and the ways of dealing
with them; you know books, and the ways of dealing with them. And
incidentally you have acquired a great respect for both these valuable
companions.

Let no young boy say to himself that, being dull in school, he will
waste time in college. Time is never wasted that is spent in manly
existence, in seeing and working with other men on a high plane, in
reading any good books upon good themes or good ideas. If you have
little money for any such purpose, remember that any sincere man can
either win scholarships or work his way through college by doing
janitor-work or a thousand other things. Remember, too, that not only
have some of the greatest men America has ever known worked their way
through college, but that money does not count for so much at the
university as it does anywhere else in life. Many a poor fellow has led
his class, and not in studies alone, but in sports and in societies and
in respect. But--and this is a big "but"--he must be a man, a
gentleman, and a hard worker.

If you are going into mercantile business, if you are going into
professional work, or if you are going to do anything that comes first
to hand, you will be the better for the three or four years, and no one
who can study nights, while he works days, can be prevented from passing
the entrance examinations in time. The only person who can really
prevent him is himself, for if he has not the force of character to
stick to it till the end, he can never do much of anything, to say
nothing of entering or working his way through college.



[Illustration: THE CAMERA CLUB]

     Any questions in regard to photograph matters will be willingly
     answered by the Editor of this column, and we should be glad to
     hear from any of our club who can make helpful suggestions.


TRANSPARENCIES FOR ORNAMENTAL LANTERN.

An ornamental lantern fitted with transparencies is a pretty and
inexpensive Christmas gift, and may be quickly and easily made by any
member of our club who owns a scroll-saw. For the sides of the lantern
make a pretty open-work design, and in the centre of each panel cut a
square large enough to admit a glass the size of a lantern slide (3-1/2
by 4). Select negatives which have plenty of detail and are of good
printing quality. Make four transparencies, using either the sensitive
plates which come for that purpose, or making tinted transparencies
according to directions given in Nos. 857 and 863. The tinted
transparencies are more ornamental, but the black and white are pretty.
These transparencies are fitted in the panels, and the lantern is then
put together.

If one does not know how to make transparencies, almost the same effect
may be produced by applying a print to plain glass, using the cover
glasses made for lantern slides, and then removing the paper, leaving
the film only on the glass. Directions for this process may be found in
No. 878. If one has used landscape negatives, a piece of pale blue paper
placed over the sky part, and a piece of green back of the landscape,
will have the effect of a colored transparency when the tiny lantern
inside is lighted. A small alcohol-lamp serves for the lighting, and
will burn for several hours. If one has a sunset view showing fine
clouds, place a faint rose-color or violet-tinted paper back of the sky,
and when the lantern is lighted the colors are like those of a real
sunset, the shadows and high lights in the clouds, making the different
tones and shades of color. Of course if viewed in a strong light this
way of coloring would be too crude, but in the faint light of the lamp
it is not noticed.

In selecting pictures for the lantern, choose those which will be
familiar to the one for whom the gift is designed, as half the value of
a photograph is in its being a picture of some well-known place or
object.

Blue transparencies show off well in a lantern of this description.
Directions for making them were given some time ago, but we print
another formula for the benefit of those who have not a copy of the
number containing the first, and who might wish to make a lantern with
blue transparencies.

No. 1.

  Red prussiate of potassium     1/4 oz.
  Water                            4 oz.

No. 2.

  Hyposulphite of soda           1/4 oz.
  Water                            4 oz.

Take old or fogged plates, and soak them in a solution made up of equal
parts of No. 1 and No. 2 until the gelatine is perfectly clear. Wash
thoroughly, and while wet place the plate, gelatine side up, in a clean
tray, and flow over it a solution made of

  Citrate of iron and ammonia    1/2 oz.
  Water                            2 oz.

Allow it to remain in this solution one minute, drain, and stand away to
dry in a dark room. Print in the sun till shadows are slightly bronzed,
about as they appear in a blue print. Remove from the frame, place in a
developing-tray, and flow with a solution made of

  Red prussiate of potassium       1 oz.
  Water                            4 oz.

When the development has been carried far enough, remove from the tray,
and wash in running water till the high lights are clear. Dry and use in
any way in which transparencies are used.

     SIR KNIGHT J. PAUL JONES, 214 N. Third St., Harrisburg, Pa., says
     that he has a 4-by-5 Daylight kodak, with plate attachment, which
     he will sell at a bargain, if any of the members of the club wish
     to purchase a camera of this kind.

     SIR KNIGHT WARREN H. MUNK, 14 Waldron Street, West Lafayette, Ind.,
     wishes to obtain a prize picture from one of the members of the
     club who has won a prize in any of the Camera Club contests. He
     says he will be glad to pay for it if he can have it. Will one of
     our members who has won a prize write to Sir Warren? Sir Warren may
     see half-tone reproductions (much reduced in size) of the pictures
     that won prizes last year, in No. 848, January 28, 1896.

     GEORGE COLEMAN, Dayton, O., asks how he may become a member of the
     Camera Club; what makes the films of negatives crack off round the
     edges, making it necessary to trim the picture considerably, thus
     reducing it very much in size. Any Knight or Lady of the Round
     Table may become a member of the Camera Club by sending name and
     address to the editor of this Department, and it will be published
     in the ROUND TABLE, and duly enrolled in the Camera Club book. To
     become a Knight or Lady of the Round Table send name and address to
     the ROUND TABLE, and patent will be sent to you. In order to enter
     contests one must belong to the Order of the Round Table. The
     softening of the film is because the water in which the negative is
     washed is of too high a temperature. Neither the water nor the
     solution should rise above 85° or fall below 60° F.; 70° is a safe
     temperature. If the solutions or fixing-bath is too warm, set the
     dishes in a pan of ice-water for a few moments to lower the
     temperature.

_The Camera Club Competitions will close February 15, 1897, as announced
in the October 27, 1896, issue. The statement in the December 8 issue
that they closed on December 15, 1896, was an error._



ADVERTISEMENTS.



Postage Stamps, &c.



[Illustration: STAMPS]

100 all dif., Venezuela, Bolivia, etc., & =POCKET ALBUM=, only 10c.; 200
all dif., Hayti, Hawaii, etc., only 50c. Agts. wanted at 50% com. List
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=AGENTS= make big money by selling from our fine approval sheets at 40%
com. Good Premiums.

MERRIMAC STAMP CO., Newburyport, Mass.



=FREE= with every 10c. packet of stamps, a beautiful calendar. Wamsutta
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JOSEPH GILLOTT'S

STEEL PENS

Nos. 303, 404, 170, 604 E.F., 601 E.F.

And other styles to suit all hands.

THE MOST PERFECT OF PENS.



[Illustration: PISO'S CURE FOR CONSUMPTION]

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Arnold

Constable & Co

Ladies' Furnishings.

_Eiderdown Bath Gowns,_

_Silk and Flannel Matinées,_

_Shaded Silk Petticoats._

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_Night Robes, Petticoats,_

_Sacques and Dresses._

INFANTS' WEAR,

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NEW YORK.



[Illustration]

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CATALOGUE FREE.

BARNEY & BERRY, Springfield, Mass.



LAUGHING CAMERA. 10c.

[Illustration: MY! OH MY!!]

The latest invention in Cameras. You look through the lens and your
stout friends will look like living skeletons, your thin friends like
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as though you were living in another world. Each camera contains two
strong lenses in neatly finished leatherette case. The latest
mirth-maker on the market; creates bushels of sport. Catalogue of 1,000
novelties and sample camera 10c., 3 for 25c., 12 for 90c. mailed
postpaid. Agents wanted.

ROBT. H. INGERSOLL & BRO.,

Dept. No. 62, 65 Cortlandt St., N. Y.



HOOPING

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Can be cured

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The celebrated and effectual English cure, without internal medicine. W.
EDWARD & SON, Props., London, Eng. =All Druggists.=

E. FOUGERA & CO., NEW YORK.



HOME STUDY.

Book-keeping, Penmanship, Arithmetic, Shorthand, etc., thoroughly taught
by =Mail= at student's =Home=. Low rates, perfect satisfaction. Cat. free.
Trial lesson 10c.

BRYANT & STRATTON, 85 College Bldg., Buffalo, N. Y.



CARDS

FOR 1897. 50 Sample Styles

AND LIST OF 400 PREMIUM ARTICLES

FREE. HAVERFIELD PUB CO., CADIZ, OHIO



HARPER'S CATALOGUE

thoroughly revised, classified, and indexed, will be sent by mail to any
address on receipt of ten cents.



For Young Naturalists.

H. Notman, 182 Amity Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., wants to join a
corresponding Chapter, or some society of young naturalists. He also
wants the pupa of the cicada and the shell it leaves on the trunk of
trees. He has beetles, and wants correspondents among members of the
Order interested in natural history.

       *       *       *       *       *

A Modern Curfew.

The saying about history repeating itself has an example in the modern
curfew, which is in legal effect in about two hundred cities in this
country. Many years ago, in English towns, a bell was rung every night
at a certain hour, and after that hour people found on the streets were
liable to be caught, tried, and punished. This old law applied to grown
folks, but the modern curfew law applies to children only, and is
designed to keep boys off the streets. It is said to be in successful
effect in Omaha, Nebraska; St. Joseph and Kansas City, Missouri. Besides
these large cities, eight or ten smaller cities in New Jersey, Ohio, and
Michigan contemplate enacting the law, and there is to be a movement
made this winter to get it passed in New York city. Will members living
in any city in which it is in effect tell the Table about it? Tell us
just what the ordinance says, and how it works in practice.

       *       *       *       *       *

To Amateur Journalists.

William F. Tillson, 149 North Street, Springfield, Massachusetts, is
interested in music and dramatics, and wants correspondents. He wants to
receive amateur papers from publishers as samples. So does Ethel S.
Deane, Dean, Ohio.

       *       *       *       *       *

Will do for Next Summer.

     Please give me plan and measurements of a single tennis-court, and
     tell me how it may be made a double court.

  WILL KELSEY.
  BARABOO.

Choose the place for your net so as to give an equal space behind each
base-line. Measure 36 feet, and put in a peg at either end, with the
tape-line fastened to it. Take 39 feet on one measure, and 53 feet 3/4
inch on the other. Where they cross is one corner. Mark off 21 feet from
the net from one end of the service-line. Transpose the measures and do
the same thing, and you have half the court. Carry the measures to the
other side of the court, and repeat the operation. The central-line runs
from the middle of each service-line. The inner side-lines run from
base-line to base-line 4 feet 6 inches inside of the side-lines. If you
are marking out a double court only, do not carry the inner side-lines
beyond the service-lines. Make a mark inside the middle of the base-line
to show where the server may stand. The diagonal of a single court is
about 47 feet 5 inches. If possible, have the court run north and south.

       *       *       *       *       *

The New Mint Building.

     The old United States Mint, for so many years in the crowded and
     expensive neighborhood on Chestnut Street in this city, is to be
     torn down and removed to Spring Garden and Sixteenth streets, about
     one mile north of its present location. Strong efforts were made to
     get the Mint removed to Washington when it was found necessary to
     build a new one. Even Chicago and New York tried to get it away
     from here. But five years ago a whole square was purchased for its
     site, and Philadelphia breathed easier.

     The new Mint will have a main entrance on Spring Garden Street. It
     will be in the form of a hollow square, giving a court-yard open to
     the sky. It is to have a terrace balustrade constructed of granite.
     Above it the material will be marble. The style is severely plain
     classic, and the design as shown on paper is far from pleasing. In
     the plan is provided a spacious room for the coin museum, which
     many readers have doubtless seen in the old building. It is by far
     the finest collection of old coins in the world, outside of the
     British Museum. Work upon the new Mint building is expected to
     begin next spring.

  FRED B. BIDDLE.
  PHILADELPHIA.

       *       *       *       *       *

Answer to Convent Puzzle.

By looking at these four diagrams you will see the trick of the puzzle.
Fig. 1 shows the nuns on good behavior; Fig. 2, when four sisters have
escaped; Fig. 3, when they have returned with four friends; Fig. 4, when
four more outsiders have been admitted--presumably by a rope-ladder.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

[Illustration: FIG. 3.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

       *       *       *       *       *

Queer Weather Signs.

     Not long since a number of natural signs were given by which a
     change in the weather could be easily told. Here are a few more:

     When a strong hoar-frost is seen in winter, it will rain in two,
     or, at most, three, days.

     It commonly rains on a day when the sun appears red or pale; or the
     next day when it sets in a cloud.

     When the moon is pale, rain; when red, wind; when of a pure and
     silver color, fair weather; according to the old verse,
  _Pallida pluit, rubicunda flat, alba serenat._

      When the sun appears double or treble through clouds, a storm of
      long duration may be expected.

      When a halo is seen around the moon, rain; around the sun during
      bright weather, rain; around the sun during a rain, fine weather.

  JEAN BONPÉRE.

       *       *       *       *       *

Questions and Answers.

Helen L. Codey: The United States takes a census each decade--1880,
1890, 1900, etc. The first national census was made in 1790. No, it was
not that this government neglected it up till that date. It was not then
the custom of countries to take careful censuses. Some States take
censuses on the abstract decades, as 1885, 1895, 1905, etc. The figures
about shipping, the crops, railway earnings, etc., to which you refer,
are collected, for the most part, by a bureau of statistics, at
Washington, and published free for general use.

Fred B. Davies asks what is meant by an advertisement, which he encloses
to us, asking for bids in connection with the making of pennies, and he
inquires if the United States does not coin its own money. Yes, our
government coins its own money, and prints its own paper bills. But it
gets blanks for pennies and nickels made by private parties. The
advertisement enclosed specifies that "one-cent blanks must be properly
annealed, cleaned and milled, and ready for the press, composed of 95
per cent. of copper and 5 per cent. of zinc and tin, in equal
proportions." These blanks are made by private concerns, and then the
pennies are coined at the mint. The blanks cost the government 21.95
cents per pound, and there are approximately 146 pieces to the pound,
avoirdupois. Last year the mint at Philadelphia coined 46,168,422
pennies.--Foster W. Stearns, 269 Park Street, Newton, Mass., wants to
hear of some amateur journals whose editors desire contributions.--May
Inman Maguire, Hendersonville, N. C., expects soon to move to
Washington, D. C., and desires to hear from some Chapter or young
ladies' literary club in that city to which she may belong.--George E.
Purdy, Box 1228, New York city, will write a description of the New York
Stock or Produce Exchange to any member anywhere willing, in turn, to
write and send him a description of an interesting spot, feature,
industry, etc., in any other city.

"Page": You should apply at once to the member of Assembly from your
district if you would become a page in the Assembly-Chamber at Albany
this winter. But, to be frank with you, it must be said that, as a rule,
boys whose parents reside in Albany are almost always appointed. Boys
are required to be bright, well behaved, and strong enough to endure
several hours of hard work per day, with sometimes a night session
thrown in. The pay is $2 per day.

Frederic B. Schurman: Charity organization societies are not found in
cities as small as the one in which you live (Erie), for the reason that
the necessity for them does not exist. They are a banding together of
public and private charities for better administration and for the study
and cure of pauperism. It is an English idea. Organized charity was
undertaken in London in 1869, and in this country in 1877. The first
American society was organized in Buffalo, N. Y., and the organizer of
it was an Episcopal clergyman named Rev. Humphrey Gurteen. The second
American society was organized in Philadelphia in 1878, and that of New
York city four years later. There are now seventy-eight such societies.



[Illustration: STAMPS]

     This Department is conducted in the interest of stamp and coin
     collectors, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question
     on these subjects so far as possible. Correspondents should address
     Editor Stamp Department.


The publishers of a paper in Boston, having occasion to send out many
thousands of their annual announcements, by a special arrangement with
the postmaster used 1c. stamps which had been cancelled in a press by
the entire sheet as follows:

[Illustration]

I understand that an employé of the P. O. inspects the affixing of
stamps thus cancelled.

This is a variety well worth collecting, but possibly the same plan may
become popular at other large post-offices, and it would be a little
difficult to determine the genuineness of many varieties.

Mr. John N. Luff read a paper on the early issues of Switzerland, at the
Collectors' Club, and illustrated the same by stereopticon views of the
stamps, counterfeits, cancellations, etc. Most of the unused stamps from
which the photographic slides were made came from Mr. H. J. Duveen's
wonderful collection of these rare stamps. This was one of the best
papers ever read before a philatelic audience, and the _first
stereopticon stamp lecture_ given in America.

People wonder at the high prices asked for old postage-stamps. The same
people probably wonder at the still higher prices asked for old books,
old armor, old pictures, etc. But the curious thing is that a man who
gives $5000 for a unique stamp is not thought to be quite as sane as the
man who gives $100,000 for an old master, or $50,000 for a rare orchid.
Still philately flourishes, and the press is educating the public.

I very much regret to announce the death, on Thanksgiving day, of the
_Daily Stamp Item_, at the age of one year. Begun as a joke, edited by
"the office cat," it has appeared day by day for a full year, always
bringing a little philatelic titbit, and sometimes containing as much
news as the average weekly or monthly stamp paper. The publishers
purpose to issue a special souvenir number during the holidays,
containing a review of the year's work, and also a complete list of the
subscribers, to each of whom a copy will be sent.

     F. W. LERK.--The little true value of "Seebecks" was shown at a
     late auction, where sets of these stamps were sold for $3, the
     catalogue value of which was $28. If you are looking at collection
     as a speculation, my advice is to buy high-priced stamps only, the
     higher the better, as a rule; but if you are collecting for fun, go
     in for everything in the countries you select, and you will have
     much satisfaction, and not suffer any money loss should you wish to
     sell your collection, provided you study your stamps carefully, get
     and keep them in fine condition, and make up all the chief
     varieties in shades, etc.

  PHILATUS.



[Illustration: IVORY SOAP]

There is a "comfortable feeling" that comes after a bath with Ivory
Soap.

TH: PROCTER & GAMBLE CO., CIN'TI.



EARN A TRICYCLE.

[Illustration]

We wish to introduce our Teas. Sell 30 lbs. and we will give you a Fairy
Tricycle; sell 25 lbs. for a Solid Silver Watch and Chain; 50 lbs. for a
Gold Watch and Chain; 75 lbs. for a Bicycle; 10 lbs. for a Gold Ring.
Write for catalog and order sheet Dept. I

W. G. BAKER,

Springfield, Mass.



_X-RAY CAMERA._

[Illustration]

Roentgen and Edison out-done. The great up to date Sensation! Penetrates
any object inserted between its lenses, no matter how thick or dense.
You can see through a solid piece of iron or a part of your body, as
through a crystal; of all optical marvels ever discovered this is the
most wonderful. Two sets of compound lenses in handsome telescope case
3-1/2 in. long. Sells for 25c. Sample complete and mailed postpaid with
catalogue of 1000 Bargains for 15c. 2 for 25c. $1.25 Doz. AGENTS WANTED.
DON'T WAIT--DO IT NOW.

Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., Dept. No. 62, 65 Cortlandt St., N. Y.



Holiday Presents for Young People

       *       *       *       *       *

"Harper's Round Table" for 1896

Volume XVII. With 1276 Pages, and about 1200 Illustrations. 4to, Cloth,
Ornamental, $3.50.

     This unusually attractive volume contains three long serial stories
     for boys; by James Barnes, Kirk Munroe, and Molly Elliot Seawell.
     There are also many shorter stories by other popular writers.

     Modern Outdoor Life is very fully treated, some one hundred and
     fifty pages being devoted to subjects of that nature, and in
     addition there is an important series of articles illustrated by
     instantaneous photographs of the different athletic sports.

     A few of the other features are the interesting papers by Mrs. Lew.
     Wallace on The Tower of London, and the twelve articles by Mrs.
     Emma J. Grey, on getting up entertainments for young people. Each
     article describes amusements suitable for one month in the year.
     Cyrus C. Adams contributes a series upon different interesting
     subjects connected with recent African explorations.

     Of the previous bound volume of HARPER'S ROUND TABLE, the _N. Y.
     Sun_ said: "There is nothing, we imagine, that the young reader
     would be likely to prize more."

A Virginia Cavalier

A Story of the Boyhood of George Washington. By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL.
Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.50.

Rick Dale

A Story of the Northwest Coast. By KIRK MUNROE. Illustrated by W. A.
ROGERS. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.25.

Naval Actions of the War of 1812

By JAMES BARNES. With 21 Full-page Illustrations by CARLTON T. CHAPMAN,
printed in color, and 12 Reproductions of Medals. 8vo, Cloth,
Ornamental, Deckel Edges and Gilt Top, $4.50.

The Ship's Company

And Other Sea People. By J. D. JERROLD KELLEY, Lieutenant-Commander,
U.S.N. Copiously Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $2.50.

The Dwarfs' Tailor

And Other Fairy Tales. Collected by ZOE DANA UNDERHILL. With 12
Illustrations. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.75.

For King or Country

A Story of the American Revolution. By JAMES BARNES. Illustrated. Post
8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.50.

Tommy Toddles

By ALBERT LEE. Illustrated by PETER S. NEWELL. Square 16mo, Cloth,
Ornamental, $1.25.

Shakespeare the Boy

With Sketches of the Home and School Life, the Games and Sports, the
Manners, Customs, and Folk-lore of the Time. By WILLIAM J. ROLFE,
Litt.D., Editor of "Rolfe's English Classics," etc. Illustrated. Post
8vo, Cloth, $1.25.

       *       *       *       *       *

HARPER & BROTHERS, Publishers, New York



[Illustration: "THE HUNTER'S STRATEGY."]

       *       *       *       *       *

HARD WORK WILL TELL.

One often envies greatness, overlooking the hardships and struggles
passed through before the place of honor has been attained. When we read
of the lives of distinguished men in any department, we find them almost
always where they are through hard work. We hear constantly of the great
amount of labor they could perform. Demosthenes, Julius Cæsar, Henry IV.
of France, Sir Isaac Newton, Washington, Napoleon, and many others,
different as they were in their intellectual and moral qualities, were
all renowned as hard workers. We read how many days they could support
the fatigues of a march; how early they rose; how many hours they spent
in the field, the cabinet, in the court--in short, how hard they worked.

       *       *       *       *       *

CEDRIC. "Are you going to hang up your stocking Christmas eve, Tommy?"

TOMMY. "No; I've got enough feet. I'm going to hang up my pocket."

       *       *       *       *       *

He was a bright, dapper young lawyer, full of spirits, and possibly a
little too smart. For some time the judge of the district court had been
waiting an opportunity to suppress a trifle of this smartness, as it
became a bore when constantly opposed to his Honor's long experience.
The young lawyer jumped up to defend a case of stealing in which the
accused had retained him. Unfortunately he had failed to thoroughly
acquaint himself with the facts of the case, other than that his client
had been arrested for stealing.

"Your Honor," he cried, "I ask you does the prisoner look like a man
that would steal? Does he look like a man that would suffer his honesty
to be demeaned by appropriating another man's gold? No! a thousand times
No! He is a patriotic citizen of the country, one of the proud upholders
of our grand republic, and I say it is an outrage for the plaintiff to
accuse such a gentleman of theft. Think of his friends that will weep
over his disgrace undeservedly thrust upon him. Think of the blight upon
this man's existence. I say the accused is too manly, too generous, too
noble a specimen of hum--"

Smash! went the judge's gavel as he roared out, "Quit that! Young man,
this is a case of hog-stealing!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He was a New-Yorker, and proud of his city, and although his Chicago
friend pointed out sight after sight, boasted of the city's fine
boulevards, and drove the New-Yorker over them, he failed to excite in
his guest more than a slight curiosity. Then he brought up the subject
of tall buildings.

"Chicago beats the world," he said. "Our tall buildings top anything
ever erected."

"Well, well," said the New-Yorker, "that's queer. Ever heard of that
building in New York that the clouds bump against? Never heard of it,
eh? I'll tell you something about it. When they put the last story on it
a workman fell off the top. Some time later I was passing along the
street below when a newsboy yelled: 'Extry. Full account of the
accident.' I bought a paper, and it described how the man toppled off
and all that. But what do you think? while I was reading it something
dropped with a crash. What was it? Why, the workman, of course! He'd
just reached the ground."

       *       *       *       *       *

In a letter that recently reached this country, written by one of Queen
Victoria's soldiers, who was with his regiment marching against the
Dervishes in the Egyptian campaign, is a little amusing story of a
certain soldier who disliked the intense heat of the country, and sought
in every kind of way to obtain some excuse for quitting the service. It
seems he complained to the doctor of his eyes, claiming that he was so
nearsighted that he could not with safety fire off his gun for fear of
hitting a comrade instead of an enemy.

"Dear me," said the doctor, "that is a serious matter. Now tell me what
you mean by nearsighted."

"Well, sir," said the soldier, and he looked around thoughtfully as if
in search of some idea, "it is an example you want? Ah, I have one. Can
you see that pin lying in a corner over there?"

"Why, yes! And I should say it required excellent eye-sight to see it,
too," replied the doctor.

"Well, that's my trouble, sir; I can't see it."

The poor man is still wondering why he is not sent back to the home
station.

       *       *       *       *       *

MY MISSION.

  Upon creating noise I'm bent--
    I never go to bed.
  Although I'm dumb, I'm eloquent
    When hit upon the head.
  I'm listened to with ecstasy
    Where'er I go or come;
  I madly roll and roll in glee--
    I'm Tommy's scarlet drum.





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