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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56766 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]
+
+Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 1896. FIVE CENTS A COPY.
+
+VOL. XVII.--NO. 859. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+MOTHER-IN-LAW TO THE CREW.
+
+ONE OF THE OLD SAILOR'S YARNS.
+
+BY W. J. HENDERSON.
+
+
+It was a beautiful summer morning. There was a light wind from the
+southwest, which just tempered to a degree of endurance the blazing heat
+of the full-orbed sun. A few wisps of feathery white lay slantwise
+across the broad field of deep-toned blue sky, promising a change of
+weather within a day's time. The sea was a vast undulating mirror of
+blue, as if all the sapphires in the world and in all the other worlds
+had been melted and poured into earth's majestic basin. From the rounded
+slopes of the broad low swells the rays of the sun danced in a million
+flashes of dazzling silver. The swells themselves ran in slow, sinuous
+folds to the inner bar, where they reared themselves in curving walls of
+translucent green shot with bars of snow, and then with the burst of
+far-off thunder fell forward into spurting, writhing acres of yeasty
+foam. Softness, warmth, and languorous sparkle lay over the sea.
+
+Far away upon the uncertain horizon loomed the black hull of an ocean
+liner, cleaving her way across the polished path at twenty knots an
+hour, to make a new record, homeward bound. The tense cordage of her
+rigging, the strained squareness of her tapering yards, the horizontal
+backward rush of the torrents of smoke from her yawning funnels gave her
+the appearance of a true greyhound, with every nerve and muscle strained
+in the effort at speed. Nearer the land three schooners, two loaded to
+their scuppers, and one flying light, so that she seemed to sail on her
+keel, were making a long leg to the southward, close-hauled on the
+starboard tack. Further in yet a score of tiny sea skiffs rose and fell
+on the bosom of the deep, and now and then the glitter of sunlight on
+the scales of a captured fish could be seen.
+
+Henry Hovey and his little brother George--who was not so little as he
+used to be--were walking along the ocean road. Often and often they had
+gone down to the old wooden pier, and sighed much because it no longer
+held their interesting friend, the Old Sailor. They had met other
+sailors, but none of them could tell tales of the sea; and, worse than
+that, none of them knew anything about the wonderful places the Old
+Sailor had seen. So Henry and George contented themselves with telling
+the old tales over, and speculating on the causes of the remarkable
+events related therein. On this beautiful summer day they unconsciously
+wandered down to the pier, and to their surprise there was a man sitting
+on the end of it. He looked so much like their old friend that they both
+stopped short and gasped. Then they shook their heads sadly and walked
+slowly out on the pier. As they drew near the man they saw that his
+shoulders were shaking with laughter. George gripped Henry's arm and
+said, "Is it a dream?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Henry, in a whisper. "I'm afraid--"
+
+"W'ich the same it are not!" cried a voice they well knew; and the next
+instant there was the Old Sailor himself, half laughing and half crying,
+dancing on one foot and holding each of the breathless boys by a hand.
+"It are not no dream," continued the Old Sailor; "'cos w'y, dreams goes
+by contraries, an' this are the werry identical sailor wot it used to
+be, an' not no contrary wotsomever."
+
+"Oh! when did you come?" cried George.
+
+"Jes now."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Jes now. I jes come ashore. I were a-sittin' on this 'ere werry
+identical pier a-lookin' fur my trunk."
+
+The two boys gazed at their old friend in silent wonder, for they were
+sure that behind that trunk there lay some mystery.
+
+"Where is it?" asked Henry at length.
+
+"Down there," answered the Old Sailor, pointing at the water. "Under
+hatches, stove in an' sunk. I wouldn't 'a' parted with that trunk fur a
+good hogshead o' baccy. 'Cos w'y; I got that there trunk in Noo Yawk the
+day I shipped, an' I had her loaded right to her hatches with things to
+bring home to ye. Howsumever, it were drownin' or losin' 'em, an' so me
+an' the trunk got ashore--leastways I did; an' that's wot."
+
+With these words the Old Sailor once more sat down on the end of the
+pier, and the boys sat beside him. He sent one of his long searching
+glances around the horizon, indulged in one of his peculiar silent
+laughs, and then suddenly said,
+
+"S'pose I was to go fur to ask ye wot kind o' wessel are that out
+yonder?"
+
+"It's an ocean liner," answered Henry.
+
+"An' s'posin' I was to say wot are them three yonder?"
+
+"Schooners," said George, "under all plain sail, close-hauled on the
+starboard tack."
+
+"My son," said the Old Sailor, solemnly, "you are growin' werry salt.
+An' s'posin' I were to ask ye wot are that high-sided one loaded with?"
+
+"Nothin'," said Henry. "She's flying light."
+
+"Werry good too. An' may I be run down an' sunk by a bar'l o' your
+mother's hot biscuit ef this here warn't the werry identical way wot it
+happened. I shipped in St. Thomas as second mate onto the four-masted
+schooner _Raw Tomatters_. She were bound fur Noo Yawk with an assorted
+cargo o' cigarettes, pickled pigs' feet, mares' nests, and ice-cream."
+
+"Mares' nests!" exclaimed Henry.
+
+"Ice-cream!" cried George.
+
+"Them's it! The mares' nests is built in the mountains by the wild
+mares, an' is imported to this country for political purposes. The
+ice-cream made in St. Thomas are werry bad, werry bad indeed; but it
+won't melt in this here climate 'cos it are so hot where it are made,
+an' so it are imported here in bricks an' sold as ice-cream candy, w'ich
+the same you may have eat, but don't do so no more. Howsumever that
+'ain't got nothin' to do with this 'ere yarn wot I'm a-tellin' ye. The
+_Raw Tomatters_ are a werry big schooner, an' she got under way with a
+crew o' twenty men, all told, includin' me, wot were the second mate,
+an' the Cap'n's mother, w'ich the same she were the cause o' the whole
+bilin'. The Cap'n's name were Janders Blue, an' he were a smallish man
+with a turned-up nose, one glass eye, an' a wooden arm, w'ich the same
+he got in the whalin' trade. His mother's name were Mehitabel Blue, an'
+she stood six feet three, an' could lift a barrel o' salt horse. So
+bein', it putty soon come to be knowed that she were not only the
+Cap'n's mother, but a mother-in-law to the hull crew. The trouble with
+her were that she weren't brought up among seafarin' pussons, but in a
+werry respectable country town where there were more churches than
+stores. She'd went down to St. Thomas on a steamer fur her health, she
+said, an' were now goin' fur to make the v'yidge back with her good son.
+I didn't see wot she wanted o' any more health than she had; but I
+didn't say nothin', her bein' the Cap'n's mother an' me the second mate,
+w'ich the same 'ain't got much to say.
+
+"Waal, the squalls commenced fur to make up jes as soon as ever we
+started to git the anchor. The old lady, wearin' a wide-brimmed straw
+hat with a long red feather into 't, an' holdin' a white umbreller over
+her head, stood aft alongside o' her son. Sez he, 'H'ist the outer jib.'
+Sez I, 'Lively there, you swabs.' With that the old woman she shet the
+umbreller down with a snap, jumped forrad in about four hops, an' sez
+she ter me, sez she,
+
+"'Wot kind o' langwidge are that ter use in the presence of a lady?'
+
+"'Beggin' yer pardon, ma'am,' sez I to she, sez I, 'I weren't aware as
+how it were onperlite,' sez I, jes like that.
+
+"'Don't you dast to call no man no sich names ag'in w'ile I'm on this
+'ere boat,' sez she; 'ef ye do, I'll git my son ter discharge ye right
+off.'
+
+"Then she h'isted the umbreller ag'in an' went aft. The men looked at me
+an' I looked at them, an' we didn't none on us say nothin'; 'cos why,
+there weren't nothin' to say. But blow me fur pickles ef 'twere more'n
+five minutes afore she bruk out in a noo place. Bill Doosenbury, the
+fust mate, he sings out fur some un to set the torps'ls.
+
+"'Lay aloft an' loose torps'ls,' sez he. 'Lively now, you sea-cooks!'
+
+"May I never cross the blessed hequator ag'in ef the old woman didn't
+dance right up to Bill, an' fetch him a swat over the head with the
+umbreller.
+
+"'I'll not stand it,' sez she to he, sez she. 'I'll not listen to no
+sich talk.'
+
+"With that the Cap'n comes a-runnin' up to her, an' sez he, 'Mother,
+wot's wrong?'
+
+"'Wot d'ye mean, Janders Blue,' sez she to he, sez she, 'by allowin' o'
+sich permiskis langwidge on your boat?'
+
+"'W'y, mother,' sez he, 'that are reg'lar sea langwidge.'
+
+"'Then it are got to be changed,' sez she to he, sez she, jes like that,
+him bein' Cap'n of the schooner, an' she bein' his mother with a white
+umbreller. She turned around to go aft ag'in, an' stopped like she were
+hit herself. 'Janders Blue,' sez she, 'look at this here rope!'
+
+"'Wot's the matter with 't, mother?'
+
+"'It are all covered with tar!'
+
+"'That's allers the way with 'em on ships,' sez he.
+
+"'Nonsense!' sez she. 'I ain't a-goin' to stand it. You're all in a plot
+to make this 'ere v'yidge o' mine a failure. I won't have it! Janders
+Blue, you set them lazy sailors to work right off with hot water 'n'
+soap a-scrubbin' that stuff off. Ugh! Tar! Ugh!'
+
+"I hope I may turn into a bloomin' Sally Growler ef the Cap'n didn't do
+jes wot she told him. Ye never in the hull course o' your life see sich
+a ridikalous sight as sailor-men a-scrubbin' the tar off their own
+riggin'. An' that weren't the wust o' 't. Byme-by, o' course, it come on
+night, and the side-lights were set. Now it so happened that we had a
+strong breeze on the starboard beam that night, an' we was putty well
+hove over. Mrs. Blue she come on deck jes after the lights was sot, an'
+she vowed as how she were tired o' the starn part o' the wessel, an'
+were a-goin' to walk up an' down forrad. She came along to the fok's'le
+deck an' got down on the lee side to walk up an' down. Jes as soon as
+she done that she seed the red light in the port riggin'. She let out a
+yawp as almost killed the wind, and called fur Bill Doosenbury. He come
+a-runnin' half scart to death, fur fear she'd got hurt. But she sez to
+him, sez she:
+
+"'Take that nasty red light down. It hurts my eyes.'
+
+"'But, ma'am,' sez Bill, 'that's our side light.'
+
+"'Waal,' sez she, 'put it on t'other side, and put the green one over
+here. I don't mind green.'
+
+"'Couldn't you walk on t'other side?' sez Bill.
+
+"'No, I couldn't,' sez she; 'you know it's too windy up there. You
+change them lights!'
+
+"Bill tried to tell her why it couldn't be did, but she wouldn't listen
+to him. She hollered fur the Cap'n, an' he come forrad, an' findin' out
+wot were the matter, offered to put out both lights, blow me fur a
+herrin' ef he didn't.
+
+"'Wot!' sez she, 'an' leave me in the dark to fall down an' break my
+neck?'
+
+"An' with that she set up a weepin' an' wailin' that her son didn't love
+her, till I'm blowed ef the old man didn't go an' shift the lights to
+suit her. An' then we had to put on double lookouts fur fear we'd run
+into somethin'. O' course soon's she went below we shifted 'em back. In
+the mid-watch 't come on to blow putty fresh, and I, bein' on watch,
+sung out a few orders about reefin', an' the watch jumped to work. Up
+come the old woman in a long night-gown an' a red flannel night-cap, two
+steps at a time.
+
+"'Wot d'ye mean,' she yells, 'a-raisin' such a racket up here at this
+time o' night? It's time all decent people was in bed. Shame on ye!
+Shame on ye! Roisterin' an' carousin' out here this way! Go to bed, ye
+miserable sinners, go to bed!'
+
+"I tried to explain to her as how the schooner'd got to be worked
+through the night.
+
+"'Nonsense!' sez she to me, sez she; 'my son Janders'd never make no man
+work all night. He'd stop the ship an' have a night watchman to mind her
+till mornin'. This are some o' your doin'. You're the wust o' the hull
+lot. Th' idee of your bein' out this time o' night. You're old nuff to
+know better!'
+
+"By that time the Cap'n were on deck, an' somehow he coaxed her to go
+below an' stay there. But the werry next mornin' she were at 't ag'in.
+We started in to wash down decks, an' up she come without her hat on an'
+her hair all up in yaller curl-papers. She tuk one look along the deck,
+an' then she bruk out:
+
+"'Waal, of all the oncivilized ways o' cleanin' a floor I must say I
+'ain't never seed nothin like that. Squirtin' onto 't with a hose!
+Janders! Janders! Come out here!'
+
+"The Cap'n come on deck lookin' putty tired, an' she sez to he, sez she:
+
+"'I won't stand it--I won't! Make them lazy men git soap an' water an'
+scrubbin'-brushes, an' git right down on their knees an' scrub the floor
+honest. Th' idee o' squirtin' onto 't!'
+
+"An' by the great hook block we had to do 't. Right down onto our knees,
+es ef we wus so many old women hired out fur to do cookin', washin', an'
+ironin! Waal, ye may keel-haul me an' copper-bottom me on top o' my head
+with yaller paper ef I didn't begin fur to git putty mad. I made up my
+mind that the next thing o' that sort wot the old girl called out fur us
+to do were not a-goin' fur to be did. Waal, it weren't so werry long
+afore the trouble bruk loose. We had a little more wind than we wanted
+day afore yistiddy, an' afore we could git the torps'ls clewed down
+there were a hit of a split in one ov 'em. Yistiddy I got my sail needle
+an' palm an' were a-startin' to go up to mend the sail. The old woman
+stopped me an' asked me wot I were a-goin' to do. She looked at me an'
+at the sail needle an' the palm, an' then she let go:
+
+"'I 'ain't never seed sich an old heathen in the hull course o' my
+life,' sez she. 'The idee o' climbin' up there an' riskin' your life
+w'en you could have the sail brung down! An' then to try to sew it with
+sich things as them! I won't stand it, that are all I got to say.'
+
+"I told her that were the way them things was allers did at sea, an' she
+vowed it were time sich nonsense were changed. Then she called fur her
+son, an' sez she to he:
+
+"This 'ere old sailor are a-doin' his best to make me mis'able aboard
+this 'ere ship. I won't stand it! You make him bring that sail down here
+and sew it up proper.'
+
+"An' the Cap'n he sez to me, sez he, that I'd better do it her way, jes
+like that, him bein' Cap'n an' me second mate. I got mad an' slammed the
+palm down on deck, an' said I'd be swabbed afore I'd do 't.
+
+"'Oh--h!' screeched the old woman, 'to think as how I'd be talked to
+like that in my son's own boat! I won't stand it! Janders Blue, you put
+that old man off this vessel at oncet, or I'll jump off myself an' wade
+ashore!'
+
+"'But it are too deep fur wadin',' sez the Cap'n.
+
+"'Then give him a boat.'
+
+"'I can't spare my men.'
+
+"'Let him row it hisself.'
+
+"'He can't do that all alone.'
+
+"'Oh, to think that my own son'd turn ag'in me, an' all fur a measly,
+chicken-faced, turkey-footed old sinner that wants to sew with a
+skewer!'
+
+"An' she beginned fur to squeal so that the Cap'n, sez he to me, sez he,
+'You git ashore somehow, quick.' Waal, my sons, we wuz about eight miles
+off yonder, an' I couldn't swim so far. But down in the fok's'le I had
+my trunk wot I'd carried off to bring home things in. So I went below
+an' emptied all the things out 'ceptin' a Chinese umbreller an' a Indian
+shawl. I brung the trunk on deck, an' sez I to the Cap'n, 'You rig a
+tackle an' lower me an' my trunk into the sea,' sez I, 'an' I'll git
+ashore right here. I've got friends on that there coast.' So he lowered
+us--me an' the trunk--an' the wind bein' fair, I set sail with the
+Chinese umbrella fur a sail. The old woman she stood on deck a-shakin'
+her umbreller at me, an' yellin' loud,
+
+"'Don't ye dast to come back to this 'ere boat, ye old reprobate!'
+
+"'Not as long as there are any land to stay on,' sez I to she, sez I.
+
+"'I won't stand it!' sez she.
+
+"'Then go to bed!' sez I.
+
+"An' by that time the schooner were so fur away I couldn't tell wot she
+sez. It tuk me all night to git in half a mile o' the beach, an' then
+the wind changed an' I had to paddle. The surf smashed my trunk ag'in
+the pier; I lost my umbreller an' my shawl; but here I are, an' here I
+stays. An' the previous part o' my percedins I'll tell ye some other
+day, but jes now I'd like to see your mother an' ask her ef she's forgot
+how I like her coffee."
+
+
+
+
+RÖNTGEN RAYS.
+
+BY WILLIAM A. ANTHONY.
+
+
+It is now some two months since the public was startled by the
+announcement that Röntgen of Bavaria had discovered that electric
+discharges in certain vacuum tubes, that is, tubes from which the air
+has been exhausted, gave out rays that would pass through wood,
+card-board, flesh, and numerous other substances opaque to light--that
+is, through which light would not pass, and would then affect the
+sensitive plates used in photographing, making it possible to show upon
+the plates the outlines of objects entirely hidden from the eye.
+
+Probably what most aroused the interest of the public was the fact that
+when a structure, like the hand, was interposed in the path of these
+rays, the bones would cast a deep shadow, while the shadow cast by the
+flesh was very faint. It was thus possible to photograph the bones of
+the living body, and, of course, to show the presence of foreign
+substances or abnormal growths.
+
+What has excited most surprise, perhaps, is the fact that these rays
+pass through bodies that are generally considered opaque, for it seems
+to those not familiar with the facts and demonstrations of science a
+most surprising thing that any rays should go through wood planks or
+sheets of metal or living flesh or brick walls. But is it really any
+more wonderful than that rays of light should go through glass or quartz
+or diamond or water? We are familiar with this last fact, because we can
+"see through" these substances. We know that glass does not shut out
+light, because we can see the space beyond it illuminated. But we have
+no sense that tells us of the presence of the Röntgen rays. We must
+resort to the photographic plate or the fluorescent screen (to be
+described further on), to show their presence, and for all information
+as to their behavior. The photographic plate is affected, while our eyes
+are not, and we are obliged to let such plates take the place of our
+eyes, and receive impressions which we can afterwards interpret.
+
+But what are "rays"? When we stand in front of a fire of glowing coals
+we _feel_ the warmth, and our eyes tell us of the light. Light and heat
+are said to _radiate_ from the glowing coals, and both light and heat
+proceed in straight lines. These straight paths followed by radiations
+we have called rays. These rays are quivering motions in a medium which
+we call the ether, and which we believe extends through all space and
+pervades all bodies. They are waves, having the character of waves on
+the water, which we can see, and sound waves in air, which we know
+exist.
+
+These ether waves, those that affect the eye and those which do not,
+differ from each other, as all wave motions differ, in the distance from
+wave to wave, or what is the same, in the frequency of the vibratory
+motions. As an example, compare the long ocean swell that comes
+thundering upon the beach at intervals of several seconds with the
+frequent swash, swash, swash of the little ripples on the shore of a
+fish-pond, or the vibrations that can be felt as a tremor of the whole
+church when the deep bass pipes of the great organ are sounded with the
+sharp shrill tones of the high treble pipe.
+
+There are means of measuring the distances from wave to wave of the
+different rays in the ether, and the result is astounding. The frequency
+is something of which it is impossible to form any conception. About 20
+millions of millions per second is the lowest, and about 1000 millions
+of millions the highest frequency. Of these, those only which lie
+between 400 and 760 millions of millions per second excite vision. In
+other words, the ether waves breaking upon the optic nerve must come at
+the rate of at least 400 millions of millions per second before that
+nerve will carry any impression to the brain--before we can "see" them.
+Why rays of these frequencies only should affect the eye we do not know.
+We only know that the structure of the eye is such that the other rays
+are powerless to produce vision. Neither do we know why the
+low-frequency rays will go through hard rubber and will not go through
+glass. We only know it is a fact.
+
+All these ether rays may produce heat. The high-frequency rays affect
+the photographic sensitive plate, and also produce another effect that
+is of especial interest in connection with the study of the Röntgen
+rays. They have the power of exciting a peculiar luminosity, or light,
+in certain substances, which are for that reason called fluorescent.
+
+Electrical discharges in vacuum tubes have long been known as sources of
+radiations which produce heat and affect the eye. Every student of
+physics knows the experiment with the aurora tube, which, when exhausted
+by a good air-pump and connected to a Holtz machine or induction coil,
+is seen filled with a pale light having something the appearance of the
+streamers of the Aurora Borealis.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 1.--THE APPARATUS USED IN MAKING RÖNTGEN
+RADIOGRAPHS.]
+
+Professor Crookes, by obtaining a vastly better vacuum, obtained in
+these tubes some new and very interesting phenomena. As the vacuum
+became better and better, the light within the tubes finally
+disappeared, and only the inside of the glass was illuminated. This
+Professor Crookes explained upon the supposition that the air particles
+remaining in the tubes are repelled from the negative terminal or
+"cathode" within the tube, and shoot off from it, proceeding in straight
+lines, until they come into collision with other particles or with the
+walls of the tubes, producing light wherever the collision occurs. When
+the exhaustion is sufficient these particles shooting out from the
+cathode meet with no obstructions until they reach the walls of the
+tube, which are bombarded by the flying particles until they shine with
+a sort of phosphorescent light, while the whole interior of the tube
+remains dark.
+
+These experiments have been repeated again and again for the last
+eighteen years in scientific laboratories and lecture-rooms, always
+exciting the greatest interest in the wonderful phenomena disclosed. But
+not until recently has it been known or suspected that all the time
+there were proceeding from the bombarded surface other rays, incapable
+of exciting vision, but possessing properties, and capable of producing
+effects even more wonderful than any that the Crookes tube had before
+shown. That certain invisible rays existed in the Crookes tube
+radiations was known about four years ago, but it remained for Professor
+Röntgen to demonstrate the remarkable properties which they possess. He
+found that a piece of card-board painted on one side with barium platino
+cyanide was illuminated when held near the excited Crookes tube, and
+that the painted surface was equally well illuminated, whether it or the
+reverse side of the card-board was presented to the tube. He further
+found that when the whole tube was covered with black paper, so that no
+rays affecting the eye could emerge, the painted screen was still
+illuminated, and further yet, that the illumination remained visible
+when a board an inch thick, a book of a thousand pages, or a plate of
+hard rubber was interposed between the tube and screen.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2.--A RADIOGRAPH OF A MAN'S HAND.]
+
+On the contrary, he found that glass, thin pieces of metal, the bones of
+the hand, more or less stopped the rays, and so cast shadows. It must
+have been a startling image that met Professor Röntgen's eye when first
+he placed his hand in the path of the rays, and saw upon the screen a
+bony skeleton hand with only a faint outline of flesh and cartilage. It
+was a startling experiment to me, after I had read all the accounts of
+Professor Röntgen's work, and knew what to expect, when I first saw the
+shadow of my own hand upon the fluorescent screen. Fig. 2 shows the
+appearance of such a shadow. After demonstrating in this way the
+transmission powers of various substances, Professor Röntgen tried the
+effect of the rays upon the photographic plate, and found it possible to
+fix there the images that he had seen upon the fluorescent screen.
+
+Fig. 1 will show how the results are obtained. A is a galvanic battery,
+B is a Ruhmkorff induction coil, C is a Crookes tube, and D is the
+plate-holder containing the sensitive plate.
+
+The battery produces a low-tension harmless current that is rapidly
+closed and broken at the induction coil, which transforms it into a
+high-tension current capable of producing electric sparks, and giving
+exceedingly painful if not fatal electric shocks. Wires convey this
+high-tension current from the coil to the terminals of the Crookes tube,
+where the Röntgen rays are produced whenever the current is turned on.
+In the figure the plate-holder is shown only a few inches from the tube,
+where the effect of the rays is strong.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.--A GOLDFISH WITH THE SPINE AND SOME OF THE
+INTERNAL ORGANS VISIBLE.]
+
+Fig. 3 shows a goldfish, with all his scales and flesh on. The line of
+his spine is clearly visible, and many of the inner organs of his body
+can be clearly seen, and the skeleton comes out very clearly, because
+the bones are more opaque to these rays than is any other part of the
+body.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.--WING OF A PIGEON, SHOWING THE SHADING EFFECT IN
+BONES.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5.--HEAD AND LEG OF PIGEON.]
+
+Fig. 4 shows the wing of a pigeon, which is interesting, because while
+the outline of the flesh is distinctly marked the feathers have
+practically disappeared. The bones are not only clear, however, but the
+thinner parts are lighter than the thicker. Fig. 5 shows the leg and
+head of the pigeon. Around the head it is just possible to make out the
+outline of the feathers, the flesh is clearly marked, and all the bones
+of the neck are visible. In like manner the leg is interesting.
+
+The transparency of the flesh makes it possible to show the presence and
+location in the body of foreign substances. Bullets, needles, and bits
+of glass have already been located by means of Röntgen ray photographs,
+and afterwards removed by a surgical operation.
+
+It is curious that the part of the eye which is transparent to the
+light, and through which light passes to reach and affect the optic
+nerve, is nearly opaque to the Röntgen rays. Vision by means of these
+rays would therefore be impossible, even if the optic nerve were
+sensitive to them.
+
+But suppose these rays could excite vision. What should we see? Holding
+a purse between the eye and a Röntgen ray source, we should see the
+coins within it. If a person stepped in the path of the ray we should
+see his bony skeleton. We might see something of his internal organs;
+perhaps we could see his heart beat. A broken bone could be seen, and
+the operation of setting it could be watched. Diseased bones or enlarged
+joints could be examined. Tubercles in the lungs would be visible. But
+these things would be visible only when they came between the eye and
+the source of the rays, much as on a dark night objects might be visible
+between you and a camp fire.
+
+In daylight objects become visible by means of the light which falls
+upon them and is reflected to the eye. This brings out the detail of the
+visible surface. But the Röntgen rays are scarcely at all reflected, and
+even if they produced vision, objects would become visible only as they
+intercepted the rays. They would not be illuminated as they are
+illuminated by rays of light, and only outlines, therefore, would be
+seen. Even fluorescent bodies which appear light under the action of the
+Röntgen rays are not really illuminated, but are rendered luminous--that
+is, are made to shine by their own light. When bodies opaque to the rays
+are placed before the fluorescent screen, merely a shadow is seen on it.
+So the photographs or "radiographs" obtained are only shadows, but they
+are not the flat featureless shadows of the "shadow pictures" often
+introduced as an entertainment at social gatherings, when the identity
+of the person casting the shadow is often impossible to make out. Few
+substances are entirely opaque to the Röntgen rays, hence the shadows
+of thicker portions of an object will be deeper than of the thinner
+portions, and the shadow becomes a shaded picture that may give details
+of the surfaces of the object. A Röntgen ray shadow of an aluminum medal
+may show the design stamped upon the surface. The shading effect is well
+shown in the bones of the pigeon.
+
+But if there are few substances entirely opaque to the newly discovered
+rays, there appear to be none that are entirely transparent. Even in air
+the rays appear to be rapidly absorbed, so that an extremely powerful
+apparatus is required for producing effects at any distance. Air seems
+to behave toward the Röntgen rays much as fog behaves to light, and it
+seems unlikely that effects can be procured at any great distance,
+perhaps not more than one hundred feet from the source.
+
+It would be rash to attempt to predict the future of the Röntgen ray.
+The uses to which it may be applied in surgery have already been hinted
+at in this article. The transparency of wood makes it possible to
+inspect the work of a carpenter, and determine whether the work hidden
+under the exterior finish has been honestly done. Hidden compartments in
+a desk or cabinet might be revealed. The contents of a packing-box might
+be ascertained without opening it. But to scientific men these rays have
+a very great interest. What are they? Are they vibrating movements
+transmitted in waves, like light? Are they particles shot off from the
+Crookes tube and flying with enormous velocity? These are questions to
+be answered.
+
+When you stand in front of a Crookes tube in action these flying
+particles are streaming through your body, stopping not at all at your
+clothing, and hardly at all checked by the flesh, nor wholly stopped
+even by the bones. A hard-wood board held between you and the tube is no
+protection. The streams pass through it unchecked. Sheets of metal even
+do not wholly stop them. The wonder of it all is that for nearly twenty
+years experimenters with the Crookes tube have been pierced through and
+through by these subtle streams and have never known it. Do they produce
+any effect as they pass through the body? Can they cause or cure
+disease?
+
+It has been proved that they pass quite freely through the lungs, but if
+tubercules are present they stop the rays. Might not the touch of the
+flowing streams dissipate the tuberculosis growth and restore health?
+Questions like these are coming up for solution, and experimenters are
+seeking the answers. The study of the Röntgen ray has just begun. What
+may not the next few months bring forth?
+
+
+
+
+AN "OLD-FIELD" SCHOOL-GIRL.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Begun in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE No. 857.]
+HARLAND.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The Foggs lived on a funny little piece of land wedged in between two of
+the Greenfield farms. The house was a cabin of two rooms, with a stone
+chimney built on the outside, but the Foggs boasted that fifty-three
+children had been born and brought up in it. How they lived was a
+partial mystery to the neighborhood. They raised corn and potatoes and
+little else in the ground enclosed by a "worm-fence," built, it was more
+than suspected, of rails stolen, a few at a time, from the Greenfield
+fences. An acre of woodland behind the house was supposed to furnish
+them with fuel, and there were always pigs and chickens running wild,
+with a dozen or so children, in the road and fields.
+
+They were "poor white folks" in a county where nearly everybody was
+respectable and well-to-do. No member of the family was ever convicted
+of an offence that took him into the courts. They might be suspected of
+stealing chickens, pigs, and wood, and even of robbing a smoke-house
+once in a while, but nothing was ever proved against them. Not one of
+them, so far as was known, had ever been in prison, and not one had ever
+grown rich or really respectable.
+
+As the Grigsby children, neat and trim, lunch bags and books in hand,
+passed the Fogg cabin on the Monday morning the school opened, two men
+and four children were in and about the yard. Mrs. Fogg, the mistress of
+the house, stood on the porch, her married daughter, with two dirty
+babies holding to her skirt, leaned against a corner of the chimney; a
+barefoot boy was chopping sticks upon a log, a smaller boy trying to
+grind his knife upon a grind-stone. All stopped what they were doing to
+stare at the sisters and brother, and the elder matron hailed them in a
+coarse voice more like a man's than a woman's.
+
+"Goin' t' school, ain't you?"
+
+Dee nodded without halting; Bea walked straight onward, her chin level,
+her white sun-bonnet hiding her face. To her horror and displeasure Flea
+stopped, and replied politely over the tumble-down fence:
+
+"Good-morning, Mrs. Fogg! I hope you are all well to-day."
+
+"Tolerable, thank God!" said the old woman, changing her tone into a
+snuffling whine. "Ain't you too soon fo' school? The teacher 'ain' gone
+by yet."
+
+"We like to be in good time," rejoined Flea, affably. "Aren't your boys
+going?"
+
+"No, bless you, honey. Major Duncomb won't let them go in on the county,
+an' pore folks ain't got no money to pay teachers with. Ah well! Th'
+Almighty, He knows! The new teacher's real spry, ain' he?"
+
+"Flea Grigsby!" called Bea, over her shoulder. "Come right along, or
+I'll tell ma when I go home."
+
+Flea noticed her as little as she noticed Mrs. Fogg's remark on the new
+teacher's spryness. She had an idea, and was in a hurry to air it.
+"Major Duncombe!" she repeated. "Could he let the children in free if he
+liked?"
+
+"Cert'nly, honey! He has the fus' word in all the county. Nobody dar'
+say his soul's his own 'less he lets 'em. 'Lord! how long? how long?'"
+
+"I am _very_ well acquainted with Major Duncombe," rushed on Flea, with
+an important air. "And you may be sure, Mrs. Fogg, that I'll speak to
+him about your grandchildren. Good-morning!"
+
+She was out of breath when she overtook her sister. Bea had walked fast
+purposely to make the others run, loyal Dee having loitered behind with
+Flea.
+
+"I should think you'd be 'shamed of yourself, stoppin' to talk with poor
+white folks 'long the road," commented the elder sister.
+
+Flea smiled mysteriously. "I had business with Mrs. Fogg."
+
+"Business! Well, I never! The less you have to do with that kind, the
+better."
+
+"Mrs. Fogg is not a bad woman, Bea," said Flea, seriously. "When you ask
+how she is, she always says, 'Pretty well, thank God,' just like Mrs.
+Elton in _Anna Ross_. I think she is a very pious person, and it is not
+her fault that she is poor. I stopped in the porch once when it was
+raining, and she talked a great deal about the trouble she had had, and
+how much she prayed, and so on. If I could, I'd be a benefactor to
+people like that."
+
+"I think sometimes you 'ain't got the sense you were born with, Flea
+Grigsby. The idea o' you _benefacting_ anything or anybody!"
+
+Flea's smile was yet more mysterious. In her glee over her new scheme
+she squeezed Dee's arm.
+
+"You wait and see! _We_ know--don't we, Dee?"
+
+"Yes, _sir-r-r_!" said Dee, stoutly.
+
+The prospective benefactress was still swelling with her secret when
+they arrived at the school-house. The boys sat on one side of the room,
+the girls on the other, a narrow aisle separating them. Dee dropped into
+a seat near the door; the girls walked well forward and took places
+close to the aisle. Three minutes afterward the teacher appeared in the
+doorway, and Major Duncombe with him. Whispers and shuffling ceased
+instantly; all eyes were fixed upon the two gentlemen as they went up to
+the top of the room, turning there to face the school. It was all quite
+proper and dignified, until the Major, having motioned to Mr. Tayloe to
+take the chair ready for him, hung himself, as it were, across the
+corner of the desk, as Flea had seen him do last Saturday.
+
+"For all the world like a pair of saddle-bags," Bea told her mother
+afterward.
+
+Sitting thus, he watched the assembling of the motley crowd with kindly
+interest. Now and then he smiled and bowed, and it was always a girl
+whom he noticed in this way. Flea flushed delightedly at seeing that his
+smile and salutation to her were especially friendly. His eyes said that
+he was glad she was here and no worse for her adventure. Many
+recollected, in after-days, how sombre was the aspect of the new teacher
+by contrast with the Major's sunny face. One recalled that he had looked
+at her and frowned when she returned Major Duncombe's bow and smile.
+
+At the time the frown gave her no concern. Her patron had distinguished
+her from the common herd by special courtesy. It was a promise of the
+eminence that would be hers from this time onward. She was already set
+apart and above her schoolmates.
+
+The Major made a little speech by way of opening the session of the
+school. It was like himself, informal and pleasant.
+
+"Young ladies and boys," he said, not rising from the desk, and even
+switching his boot lightly with his riding-whip while he talked, "I have
+gone security for your good behavior to the gentleman who takes charge
+of you for the year to come. I know you won't disappoint him or me. I
+have proved my faith in him as a gentleman and a scholar by putting my
+two boys under his care. I have told him to be strict with them. The
+teacher who does his duty is bound to be strict. A school is like an
+army. Orders must be carried out and no questions asked, and no tales
+told out of school. That was the law in my school-days, and it is a good
+law. From the very start you must believe that your teacher is your
+friend, and that he is doing _his_ best. Take my word for that until you
+find it out for yourselves. I go his security too. I know all about him.
+I knew his grandfather and his father. They were true Virginia gentlemen
+from crown to toe. And a Virginia gentleman of the right sort is the
+best specimen of a man ever made. Never forget that, boys. I knew Mr.
+Tayloe's mother also, young ladies." In addressing them he arose to his
+feet, and his voice was gentler: "She was a lady such as a man takes his
+hat off to when he so much as thinks of her. For her sake I know that
+her son will treat you kindly and respectfully. For my sake I hope that
+you will prove yourselves, as young ladies always do, the most obedient
+and diligent students in the school. Upon my word"--abandoning the
+attempt at formal gallantry, and relapsing into his every-day
+manner--"when I look into these bright eyes and rosy faces, I envy Mr.
+Tayloe the privilege of leading you along the flowery paths of learning.
+
+"This is all I have to say to you at present. All I ought to say, I
+mean, for I could talk for hours, it is so delightful to see you, and to
+live over for the time my own school-days in this very place. And so,
+good-day, and God bless every one of you!"
+
+In passing down the aisle he laid his hand lightly upon what her father
+called Flea's "Shetland-pony mane," and sent a merry flash of his gray
+eyes into hers uplifted in enchanted surprise.
+
+Mr. Tayloe rapped smartly upon his desk with the ruler, and flourished
+it at the beginning and the end of his short speech.
+
+"Children, I am here to teach. You are here to be taught. I mean to do
+my duty. I shall make it my business to see that you do yours. I shall
+treat you, one and all, boys and girls, exactly alike. I shall have no
+favorites, and show no partiality to anybody. If you are lazy and
+disobedient and saucy, you will be punished without fear or favor. If
+you study well and behave well, you will not be punished.
+
+"The school will be opened every morning by reading the Scriptures and
+with prayer. Open your Bibles at the first chapter of Genesis."
+
+Every scholar had a Bible. Some had brought no other book with them. The
+rustling of leaves caused by the command subsided, and the teacher read
+distinctly, in a metallic tone, the first verse:
+
+"'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.' What is your
+name?" addressing in precisely the same voice a boy who sat at the
+extreme left of the front row of benches.
+
+"Thomas Carter, sir!" faltered the startled lad.
+
+"Thomas Carter will read the second verse, the boy next to him the
+third, and so on, right across the room to the end of the front bench
+where those girls are sitting. Then the girl next to the wall on the
+second bench will take her turn, and so on, clear across the room back
+to the other wall. Go on, Thomas Carter."
+
+Some of the scholars read badly, some tolerably well. With one
+exception, none of them did themselves justice. They were diffident
+under the gaze of the pale blue eyes, or flustered by the sound of their
+own voices in the deep stillness that had fallen upon the school-room.
+Flea Grigsby alone kept a steady head and a steady voice. She read
+uncommonly well for a girl of her age, and she knew it. The boy across
+the aisle from her had fallen over the word "firmament," and the teacher
+had helped him to pass it by obliging him to spell the word twice, then
+to re-read the verse. Flea was the first girl who was called upon to
+read.
+
+In her zeal she spoke more loudly than she was conscious of doing,
+emphasized certain words in a marked way, and did not forget to count
+"one" to herself at the comma, and "one, two, three," at the colon.
+
+"And God made the _firmament_, and divided the waters which were _under_
+the firmament from the waters which were _above_ the firmament: and it
+was _so_."
+
+Bea's pretty lips were parting to begin the next verse when the
+teacher's gesture arrested her. An unpleasant smile drew up the corners
+of his mouth; his eyes were fixed upon Flea's face. To the amazement of
+the school he proceeded to read aloud the verse she had just finished,
+mimicking her girlish pipe, and exaggerating into absurdity the emphasis
+she had meant to make effective.
+
+Some of the boys snickered; a few girls giggled. The rest looked scared
+and puzzled.
+
+[Illustration: "THAT IS NOT READING; THAT IS MOUTHING."]
+
+"That is not reading; that is mouthing," Mr. Tayloe ended the imitation
+by saying. "The sooner you get rid of that sort of affectation, Felicia
+Grigsby, the better for yourself. It may do for your private Shakespeare
+studies. It will not do for the Bible and this school. You think it very
+fine; it is really ridiculous. Next girl, read the eighth verse!"
+
+The blow was brutal. It cut, as he had meant it should, down to the
+quick of the child's sensibilities. True, her self-conceit and her
+mannerisms had drawn it upon her. When children are thus "taken down" by
+their superiors in age and position we say, "It _hurts_, but it is good
+for them. But for such rubs they would be prigs; but for such pricks to
+vanity they would grow up cads. We all had to go through the small mill.
+In after-years we are the wiser for it."
+
+Had Felicia Grigsby dropped from the bench in a dead swoon it would have
+been a merciful relief from what she endured, as, with eyes bent upon
+the page she could not see for the hot haze that swam between her and
+it, she sat perfectly still and let teacher and pupils think what they
+might of her.
+
+At last she was dully awake to the fact that the boys on the front bench
+were upon their second round. Her turn would be upon her again before
+she could stop breathing fast or swallow the burning ball in her throat.
+She could not speak! She would not try. Nearer and nearer came the
+husky, reedy voices of the big boys. There were five on the front bench.
+The smallest of the five sat next to the aisle. His name was Senalius
+Snead. They called him "Snail" for short. He had a high, squeaking
+voice, like a pig's squeal. She had not turned a leaf. She could not
+have read a line if she had, but her ears, grown all at once acute, lost
+not one of the stammered words. Senalius Snead read horribly. She had
+pitied him when he read awhile ago. She could wish now that he would go
+on forever.
+
+"And-the-evening-and-the-morning-were-the--"
+
+"Spell it!" ordered the teacher, as the boy brought up short.
+
+Without looking at him, Flea knew that he used a stubby forefinger with
+a dirty nail as a "pointer."
+
+"S-i-x-t-h!" he squeaked. "_Sixtieth_ day!"
+
+"It would have been the sixtieth if you had had a hand in the job," said
+the master, smiling his unpleasant smile. "As it is, 's-i-x-t-h,' spells
+'sixth.' Let us pray! The scholars will kneel."
+
+The chapter was ended then! Flea grew sick all over. Her head felt
+queer, and the sweat started out in icy drops upon her forehead and
+upper lip. She never knew how she got upon her knees, but she was there,
+her face in her hands, her elbows upon the bench. Mr. Tayloe stood up
+and read a short prayer from a book. It asked, among other things, that
+"our hands may be kept from picking and stealing." There was nothing
+about breaking the hearts and casting down the dreams of others, or
+trampling under foot the small, sweet courtesies that make working-day
+lives tolerable. If there had been, Mr. James Tayloe would have read it
+all in the one tone--a tone as void of feeling and sympathy as the
+"rat-a-tat-tat" of a spoon upon a dish-pan.
+
+The morning was given up to examination and arrangement of the scholars
+into classes. There was good stuff in Felicia, for by the time she was
+called forward, with six other girls about the same age and size with
+herself, to show what she knew, she had plucked up spirit to answer
+clearly every question put to her. Except that her eyes were dull, and
+the lip-lines sagged somewhat, she looked like her usual self. The
+questions that fell to her were many, and the questioner pressed them
+closely, taking nothing for granted. He even laid traps for her by
+varying the forms of the queries.
+
+"You said that General Washington fought the battle of the Cowpens, I
+believe?" he said once.
+
+"No, sir; _Colonel_ Washington."
+
+And again, "You don't pretend to tell me that Cornwallis did not give
+his sword to Washington's representative after the battle of Trenton?"
+
+"No, sir. That was at Yorktown."
+
+By-and-by--"The sun is nearer to the earth than the moon is, or it would
+not be so much hotter. That is so--isn't it?"
+
+Flea's dull eyes did not light up, but a slight smile contracted her
+mouth. "The sun is 95,000,000 miles from the earth. The moon is 240,000
+miles."
+
+It was small game for a grown man, but the exchange of question and
+reply became presently a sort of wordy duel. The girl was on her
+mettle--Scotch mettle--and showed no sign of confusion when sure of her
+ground. Hers was an excellent mind, retentive as well as quick. What she
+had learned she kept, and understood how to use it.
+
+Her father would have been proud of his lassie's proficiency in
+geography, grammar, and history, of her reading, her spelling, and her
+writing, had he been there. His heart would have been sore for her when
+the inquisitor at length probed her weak spot. She disliked arithmetic,
+and was hardly further advanced in it than the little girls beside her,
+who had heard with hanging jaws and round eyes what was to them a
+miraculous show of learning.
+
+Mr. James Tayloe's faint blue eyes shone and twinkled at the first
+blunder. At the fifth he laughed out the short harsh snarl his pupils
+were to learn to dread.
+
+"Aha!" He actually snapped his fingers with glee. "You _don't_ know
+everything then, if you _are_ to be a 'comfort and a pride' to your
+teacher--his one 'industrious and intelligent pupil!' When I meet with a
+boy--and especially with a girl--who thinks she can tell me more than I
+ever thought of learning, I like to take her down a peg or two!"
+
+He need not have said it. The whole school looking on, partly in alarm,
+partly, I am sorry to say, in amusement that was the livelier for a dash
+of envy, understood already that for some reason he would enjoy lowering
+the girl in her own eyes and in the sight of others.
+
+He was a man of strong prejudices and overbearing temper. He had been
+brought up as a rich man's son, and his father had died poor just as his
+son had left the university. In order to get the means for studying law,
+he must teach school for a couple of years, and Major Duncombe, who knew
+his story, offered him the neighborhood school, doubling the salary out
+of his own pocket without letting this be known to the young teacher.
+
+He had taken a positive dislike to our poor Flea on Saturday, upon what
+seemed to him good grounds. Her forced composure under the severe
+examination to which he had subjected her was, in his opinion, sheer
+effrontery. She thought too much of herself, and should be taught her
+proper place. If she had trembled and cried, as several of the other
+girls had, he would have let her off more easily. She was as vain as a
+peacock and as stubborn as a mule, in his opinion. Such behavior was
+rank rebellion, and he meant to put it down with a strong hand.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+RICK DALE.
+
+BY KIRK MUNROE.
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+CAPTURED BY A REVENUE-CUTTER.
+
+
+The sight of that armed boat making fast to the sloop, and its agile
+occupants springing on board, was so startling to the two lads taking in
+its every detail from their point of vantage on shore, that if
+excitement could have affected Alaric Todd's heart it would certainly
+have done so at that moment. As it was, he did not even realize that his
+heart was beating unusually fast. His mind was too full of other
+thoughts just then for him to remember that he had a heart. He only
+realized that the vessel of which he had formed the crew had fallen into
+the clutches of outraged law, and that for the present at least her
+career as a smuggler was at an end. Now that she was really captured, he
+was conscious of a regret that after successfully eluding her enemies so
+long she should after all fall into their hands. He even felt sorry for
+Captain Duff, surly old bear that he was.
+
+At the same time he was thankful not to be on board the captured craft,
+and rejoiced in the thought that this sudden change of affairs would
+sweep away all Bonny's scruples, and leave him free to seek some
+occupation other than that of being a smuggler.
+
+As for that young sailor himself, his feelings were equally
+contradictory with those of his companion, though his sympathies leaned
+more decidedly toward the side of the law-breaker.
+
+"Poor Cap'n Duff!" he exclaimed in a low tone. "This is tough luck for
+him; and I must say, Rick Dale, that the whole thing is pretty much your
+fault, too. If you'd kept a half-way decent lookout you'd have seen that
+yawl when she was two miles off. Then we could have got under way, and
+given her the slip as easy as you please. Now you and I have lost our
+job, while Cap'n Duff will lose his and his boat besides. I'll never see
+my wages, either; and, worst of all, in spite of my invention working so
+smooth these revenue fellows have got the laugh on us. I say it's too
+bad, though to be sure it does let us out of the smuggling business. I
+expect it will be a long time, though, before I get another job as first
+mate, or any other kind of a job that will be worth having."
+
+"But, Bonny," interposed Alaric, anxious to defend his own reputation,
+"I wasn't told to look out for boats, but only to watch the cutter, and
+I hardly took my eyes off of her until you came."
+
+"That's all right; only by the time you've knocked round the world as
+much as I have you'll find out that any fellow who expects to get
+promoted has got to do a heap of things besides those he's told to do.
+What he is told to do is generally only a hint of what he is expected to
+do. But just listen to the old man. Isn't he laying down the law to
+those chaps, though?"
+
+The voices of those on the sloop came plainly to the ears of the hidden
+lads, and above them all roared and bellowed that of Captain Duff, as
+though he expected to overwhelm his enemies by sheer force of bluster.
+
+"Chinamen!" he shouted--"Chinamen! No, sir, ye won't find no Chinamen
+aboard this craft, nor nothing else onlawful."
+
+"Smell 'em, do ye? Smell 'em! So do I now, and hev ever sence you
+revenooers come aboard. Seems like ye can't get the parfume out of your
+clothing."
+
+"Going to seize the sloop anyway, be ye? Waal, ye kin do it, seeing as
+I'm all alone and a cripple. There'll come a day of reckoning, though--a
+day of reckoning, d'ye hear? I'm a free-born American citizen, and I'll
+protest agin this outrage till they hear me clear to Washington."
+
+"He's heard over a good part of Washington this minute," whispered
+Bonny. "But what are they talking about now?"
+
+"Phil Ryder!" the Captain was shouting. "Philip Ryder! No, sir, there
+ain't no one of that name aboard this craft, nor hain't ever been as I
+know of. I did know a Phil Ryder once, but-- What's that ye say? That'll
+do? Waal, it won't do, ye gold-mounted swab, not so long as I choose to
+keep on talking. Lookout there, or I'll brain ye sure as guns! Lookout,
+I--"
+
+This last exclamation was directed to a couple of sturdy bluejackets,
+who, obeying a significant nod from their officer, seized the irate
+Captain by either arm, hustled him down into his own cabin, and drew the
+slide. Then leaving these two aboard the _Fancy_, the others re-entered
+their boat and began to pull toward shore, with the evident intention of
+making a search for the missing members of the sloop's crew as well as
+for her recent passengers.
+
+"Hello!" cried Bonny, softly, "this thing is beginning to get rather too
+interesting for us, and the sooner we light out the better."
+
+So the lads started on a run, and had gone but a few rods, when Alaric,
+catching his toe on a projecting root, was tripped up and fell heavily.
+With such force was he flung to the ground that for several minutes he
+was too sick and dizzy to rise. When he finally regained his feet, and
+expressed a belief that he could again run, it was too late. The boat's
+crew were already scattering through the woods, and one man, detailed to
+search the point, was coming directly toward the place where the boys
+were concealed.
+
+It seemed inevitable that they should be discovered, and Alaric, already
+giving himself up for lost, was beginning to see visions of the
+government prison on McNeil's Island, when Bonny spied one avenue of
+escape that was still open to them.
+
+"Scrooch low!" he whispered, "and follow me as softly as you can."
+
+Alaric obeyed, and the young sailor began to move as rapidly as possible
+toward the beach. With inexcusable carelessness the Lieutenant had left
+his boat hauled up on the shore without a man to guard her. Bonny
+noticed this, and also that the sloop's dinghy still lay where he had
+left it. If they could only reach the dinghy unobserved they would stand
+a much better chance of making an escape by water than by land.
+
+So the boys crept cautiously through the undergrowth without attracting
+the attention of their only near-by pursuer, until they reached the
+beach, where a cleared space of about one hundred feet intervened
+between them and their coveted goal, and this they must cross, exposed
+to the full view of any who might be looking that way. They paused for
+an instant, drew long breaths, and then made a dash into the open.
+
+Almost with the first sound of rattling pebbles beneath their feet came
+a yell from behind. The bluejacket had discovered them, and was leaping
+down the steep slope in hot pursuit.
+
+[Illustration: "RUN, RICK! YOU'VE GOT TO RUN!" PANTED BONNY.]
+
+"Run, Rick! You've got to run!" panted Bonny. "Give me the bag."
+Snatching the canvas bag from Alaric's hands as he spoke, the active
+young fellow darted ahead and flung it into the dinghy. "Now shove!" he
+cried. "Shove with all your might!"
+
+It was all they could do to move the boat, for the tide had fallen
+sufficiently to leave it hard aground, and with their first straining
+shove they only gained a couple of feet; the next put half her length in
+the water, and with a third effort she floated free.
+
+"Tumble in!" shouted Bonny, and Alaric obeyed literally, pitching head
+foremost across the thwarts with such violence, that but for his
+comrade's hold on the opposite side the boat would surely have been
+capsized.
+
+With the water above his knees, Bonny gave a final shove that sent the
+boat a full rod from shore, and in turn tumbled aboard.
+
+He was none too soon; for at that moment the sailor reached the spot
+they had just left, and rushing into the water, began to swim after them
+with splendid overhand strokes. Bonny snatched up the dinghy's single
+oar, and seeing that they would be overtaken before he could get the
+boat under way, brandished it like a club, threatening to bring it down
+on the man's head if he came within reach.
+
+A single glance at the lad's resolute face convinced the swimmer that he
+was in dead earnest, and realizing his own helplessness, he wisely
+turned back. Then with a shout of derision Bonny began to scull the
+dinghy toward open water, while the sailor strove with unavailing
+efforts to launch the heavy yawl.
+
+Without troubling themselves any further about him, the lads turned
+their attention to the sloop, which they were now approaching. The two
+men left in charge had watched with great interest the scene just
+enacted so close to them, but in which, having no boat at their
+disposal, they were unable to participate. Now one of them shouted:
+"Come aboard here, you young villains! What do you mean by running off
+with government property?"
+
+"What do you mean by eating my breakfast?" replied Alaric, hungrily, as
+he noticed the men making a hearty meal off the food they had discovered
+in the sloop's galley.
+
+"Your breakfast is it, son? So you belong to this craft, do you? Come
+aboard and get it, then."
+
+"Don't you wish we would?" retorted Bonny, jeeringly, as he stopped
+sculling and allowed the dinghy to drift just beyond reach from the
+sloop. "I say, though, you might toss us a couple of hardtack."
+
+"What? Feed you young pirates with rations that's just been seized by
+the government? Not much. I'm in the service, I am."
+
+Just then a bright object flashed from one of the little round cabin
+windows and fell in the dinghy. It was a box of sardines. Tins of potted
+meat, mushrooms, and other delicacies followed in quick succession. One
+or two fell in the water and were lost; but most of them reached their
+destination, and were deftly caught by Alaric, whose baseball experience
+was thus put to practical use. So before the bewildered guards fully
+realized what was taking place the dinghy was fairly well provisioned.
+At length one of them seemed to comprehend the situation, and sprang in
+front of the open port just in time to stop with his legs a flying
+tumbler of raspberry jam. As it broke and streamed down over his white
+duck trousers the boys in the dinghy shouted with laughter, and nearly
+rolled overboard in their irrepressible mirth.
+
+All at once there came a hoarse shout from the same cabin port. "Look
+astarn, ye lubbers! Look astarn!"
+
+So occupied had the lads been with the sloop that they had given no
+thought to what might be taking place on shore, but at this warning a
+startled glance in that direction filled them with dismay.
+
+Another sailor, attracted by the shouts on the beach, had returned to
+the assistance of his mate, and together they had succeeded in launching
+the yawl. Then, pulling very softly, they had slipped up on the unwary
+lads, until they were so close that one of them had quit rowing, and
+crept forward to the bow, when he crouched with an outstretched
+boat-hook, that in another second would be caught over the dinghy's
+sternboard.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+ESCAPE OF THE FIRST MATE AND CREW.
+
+The situation certainly looked hopeless for our lads, and the men on the
+sloop were already shouting derisively at them. Alaric caught another
+mental glimpse of the government prison, and even Bonny's stout heart
+experienced an instant of despair. He was still standing in the stern of
+the dinghy and holding the oar that he had used in sculling. Moved by a
+sudden impulse, and just as the extended boat-hook was dropping over the
+stern of the dinghy, he struck it a smart blow with his oar, and had the
+good fortune to send it whirling from the sailor's grasp. With a second
+quick motion the lad set his oar against the stern of the yawl, that was
+now within four feet of him, and gave a vigorous shove. The slight
+headway of the heavy craft was checked, and the lighter dinghy forged
+ahead.
+
+"Oh, you will, will you, you young rascal?" cried the sailor, angrily,
+as he leaped back to his thwart, and bent to his oar with furious
+energy. His companion followed his example, and under the impetus of
+their powerful strokes the yawl sprang forward. At the same time Bonny,
+facing backward, and working his oar with both hands, was sculling so
+sturdily that the dinghy rocked from side to side until it seemed to
+Alaric that she must certainly capsize. She was making such splendid
+headway, though, that the much heavier yawl could not gain an inch. Its
+crew, unable to see the fugitive dinghy without turning their heads, and
+having no one to steer for them, were placed at a disadvantage that
+Bonny was quick to detect.
+
+Watching his opportunity, he caused his craft to swerve sharply to one
+side, and the yawl holding her original course for some seconds before
+his manoeuvre was discovered, his lead was thus materially increased.
+
+Just as Bonny was ready to drop his oar from exhaustion a shrill,
+long-drawn whistle sounded from the now distant beach. Its effect on the
+crew of the yawl was magical. They stopped rowing, looked at each other,
+and consulted. Then they gazed at the retreating dinghy and hesitated.
+They felt it to be their duty to continue the pursuit, but they also
+knew the penalty for disobeying an order from a superior, and that
+whistle was an unmistakable order for them to go back.
+
+The cutter's third Lieutenant had returned from his expedition into the
+woods with three wretched Chinamen, whom, despite their eagerly produced
+certificates, he had seen fit to make prisoners. He was amazed to find
+the yawl gone from where he had left it, and the details of the chase in
+which it was engaged being hidden from him by the intervening sloop, he
+gave the whistle signal for its immediate return.
+
+As the crew of the yawl hesitated between duty and obedience the
+peremptory whistle order was repeated louder and shriller than before.
+This decided the wavering sailors, and they reluctantly turned their
+boat.
+
+As for the fugitives, they could hardly believe the evidence of their
+senses. Was the chase indeed given over, and were they free to go where
+they pleased? It seemed incredible. Just as they were on the point of
+being captured, too, for Bonny now confided to Alaric that he couldn't
+have held out at that pace one minute longer. As he said this the tired
+lad sat down for a short rest.
+
+Almost immediately he again sprang to this feet, and thrusting his oar
+overboard, began to scull with one hand. "It won't do for us to be
+loafing here," he explained, "for I expect those fellows have been
+called back so that the whole crowd can chase us in the sloop."
+
+"Oh, I hope not," said Alaric; "I'm tired of running away."
+
+"So am I," laughed Bonny--"tired in more ways than one; but if fellows
+bigger than we are will insist on chasing us, I don't see that there is
+anything for us to do but run. There! thank goodness we've rounded the
+point at last, and got out of sight of them for a while at any rate."
+
+"Where are you going now, and what do you propose to do next?" asked
+Alaric, who, fully realizing his own helplessness in this situation, was
+willing to leave the whole scheme of escape to his more experienced
+companion.
+
+"That's what I'm wondering. Of course it won't do to stay out here very
+long, for in less than fifteen minutes the sloop will be shoving her
+nose around that point. Nor it wouldn't be any use to try and get to
+Tacoma--at least not yet a while--for that's where they'll be most
+likely to hunt for us. So I think we'd better cross the channel, turn
+our boat adrift, and make our way overland to Skookum John's camp. It
+isn't very sweet-smelling, and they don't feed you any too well--that
+is, not according to our ideas--but just because it is such a mean kind
+of a place no one will ever think of looking for us there. Besides,
+Skookum's a very decent sort of a chap, and he'll keep us posted on all
+that happens in the bay. So if you don't mind roughing it a bit--"
+
+"No, indeed," interrupted Alaric, eagerly. "I don't mind it at all. In
+fact, that is just what I want to do most of anything, and I've always
+wished I could live in a real Indian camp. The only Indians I ever saw
+were in the Wild West Show in Paris."
+
+"Have you been to Paris?" asked Bonny, wonderingly.
+
+"Yes, of course, I was there for-- I mean yes, I've been there. But,
+Bonny, what makes you think of turning this boat adrift? Wouldn't we
+find her useful?"
+
+"I suppose we might; but she isn't our boat, you know, and you wouldn't
+keep a boat that didn't belong to you just because it might prove
+useful, would you?"
+
+"No, certainly not," replied Alaric, rather surprised to have his
+companion take this view of the question. "I would try and hand her over
+to the rightful owner."
+
+"So would I," agreed Bonny, "if I knew who he was; but after what has
+just happened I don't know, and so I am going to turn her adrift in the
+hope that he will find her. Besides, it wouldn't be safe to leave her on
+shore, because she would show anybody who happened to be looking for us
+just where we had landed."
+
+"That's a much better reason than the other," said Alaric.
+
+During this conversation the dinghy had been urged steadily across the
+channel, and was now run up to a bold bank, where the boys disembarked.
+After removing Alaric's bag and the several cans of provisions so
+thoughtfully furnished them by Captain Duff, Bonny gave the boat a push
+out into the channel, down which the ebbing tide bore her, with many a
+twist and turn, toward the more open waters of the sound.
+
+"To be left in this way in an unknown wilderness makes me feel as Cortez
+must have felt when he burned his ships," reflected Alaric, as he
+watched the receding craft.
+
+"I don't think I ever heard about that," said Bonny, simply. "Did he do
+it for the insurance?"
+
+"Not exactly," laughed Alaric; "and yet in a certain way he did too.
+I'll tell you all about it some time. Now, what are you going to do
+next?"
+
+"Climb that bluff, lie down under those trees while you eat something,
+and watch for the sloop," answered Bonny, as though his programme had
+all been arranged beforehand.
+
+They did this, and Alaric was so hungry that he made away with a whole
+box of sardines and a tin of deviled ham. He wondered a little if they
+would not make him ill, but did not worry much, for he was rapidly
+learning that while leading an out-of-door life one may eat with
+impunity many things that would kill one under more ordinary conditions.
+He had just finished his ham, and was casting thoughtful glances toward
+a bottle of olives, when Bonny exclaimed. "There she is!"
+
+Sure enough, the sloop, with the cutter's yawl in tow, was slowly
+beating out past the point on the opposite side of the channel. She
+stood well over toward the western shore, and the tide so carried her
+down that when she tacked she was close under the bluff on which the
+boys, stretched at full length and peering through a fringe of tall
+grasses, watched her. She came so near that Alaric grew nervous, and was
+certain her crew were about to make a landing at that very spot. With a
+vision of McNeil's Island always before him, he wanted to run from so
+dangerous a vicinity and hide in the forest depths; but Bonny assured
+him that the sloop would go about, and in another moment she did so,
+greatly to Alaric's relief.
+
+They could see that Captain Duff was still confined below, and they even
+heard one of the men sing out to the officer in command: "There it is
+now, sir, about two miles down the channel. I can see it plain."
+
+"Very good," answered the Lieutenant; "keep your eye on it, and note if
+they make a landing. If they don't, we'll have them inside of half an
+hour."
+
+"Yes, you will," said Bonny, with a grin.
+
+As the sloop passed out of hearing the lads crept back from the edge of
+the bluff, gathered up their scanty belongings, and started through the
+forest toward the place where Bonny believed Skookum John's camp to be
+located.
+
+After an hour of hard travel, they came suddenly on the camp, and were
+terrified at sight of the cutter's yawl lying in the mouth of the creek,
+and the revenue officer standing on shore engaged in earnest
+conversation with Skookum John himself. Soon he shook hands with the
+Indian and stepped into his boat. Just as it was about to shove off, a
+villanous cur, scenting the new-comers, darted toward their
+hiding-place, barking furiously.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE CONGO BASIN.]
+
+STORIES OF CONGO DISCOVERY.
+
+THE SECOND LARGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD.
+
+BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.
+
+
+[Illustration: A NATIVE RIVER BRIDGE.]
+
+About a hundred years ago the school children of our country were
+reading in their Morse's Geography that there were no great mountains in
+North America, and that our largest mountains were the Alleghanies,
+which were supposed to be a continuation of the Andes, interrupted by
+the Gulf of Mexico. Teachers in those days edified boys and girls with
+more or less amusing misinformation such as this about the land they
+lived in. It was three hundred years after Columbus had discovered
+America, and such blunders in the text-books show how very slowly
+geographical knowledge had grown in those centuries.
+
+But there has been a revolution. For over fifty years men and women have
+been eagerly studying this great house where we abide, with its five big
+rooms and its thousands of little ones. No one ever saw before such zeal
+for geographical discovery. Africa heads the list, for that continent, a
+fourth larger than our own, which was scarcely known a century ago,
+except in its outlines and along some of its rivers, has been thrown
+open to our gaze in nearly every corner; and the part of Africa where
+the greatest amount of work, the largest interest, and the most
+surprising discoveries have centred is the basin of the Congo, the
+second largest of the world's river systems.
+
+Europe knew of this mighty river before she ever heard of Columbus. For
+four centuries sailors of various lands saw the Atlantic tinted for
+forty miles from the shore by the yellow Congo tide; but no one knew
+till Stanley told, eighteen years ago, where this mighty flood came
+from. Livingstone lived and travelled for many months along the far
+upper Congo, but the great old man died in the belief that he had traced
+one of the sources of the Nile. It was the Niger problem reversed.
+Nobody knew for centuries where the Niger River reached the sea. Nobody
+knew where the Congo gathered its great floods. One river needed a
+mouth, and the other a fountainhead, and so some wise geographers united
+the two, making the Niger the upper part of the Congo. Mungo Park, who
+traced the upper Niger for a thousand miles, believed it was a Congo
+tributary, if not the Congo itself; and the Tuckey expedition perished
+of fever among the lower Congo cataracts in 1816, while bravely trying
+to fulfil their mission to ascend the Congo to the Niger, if the two
+rivers were really one.
+
+Eighteen years ago Stanley traced the Congo from central Africa over
+1500 miles to the ocean. His great discovery made him famous, but other
+men who followed him, some of whose names are hardly known, except to
+geographers, have travelled far more widely in the Congo basin than
+Stanley was able to do. He led the way, and forty or fifty followers,
+scattering all over the Congo basin, which is half as large as the
+United States, have been revealing this land to us; and students of the
+ocean have been studying the sea-bed off its mouth. Let us glance at a
+few facts that have been learned about this mighty river system.
+
+It is found that more water pours into the ocean through the Congo's
+mouth, which is six miles wide, than from all the other rivers in Africa
+put together. The soft, dark-colored mud brought down by the river has
+been distinctly traced on the ocean bottom for six hundred miles from
+the land. In no other part of any ocean do the influences of the land
+waters make themselves felt so far out to sea.
+
+But it is not the deep lower Congo, which large steamers from Europe
+ascend to the foot of the rapids, nor the roaring torrents along the 235
+miles of the cataract region, that have attracted most attention. It is
+the placid upper Congo, with its few reaches of rapids, and its many
+tributaries, stretching away to far-distant parts of inner Africa, that
+has kept the map-makers busy. This is the part of the continent where
+explorers have been most active and the results most remarkable. No
+part of the world of the same extent ever yielded so many geographical
+surprises as did this region from 1885 to 1890. It was simply impossible
+for the cartographers to keep their maps abreast of the news as it came
+from the upper Congo.
+
+[Illustration: BOMA, THE CAPITAL OF THE CONGO STATE. STANLEY'S BOAT IN
+THE FOREGROUND.]
+
+In January, 1885, the missionary George Grenfell started from Stanley
+Pool on his little steamboat in quest of villages of friendly natives
+where mission stations might be planted with good prospects of success.
+He had previously been far up the river, and thought he knew it very
+well; but on this trip he accidentally got out of the Congo, and did not
+discover his mistake until he had steamed along a whole day, and found
+that his little craft was pushing into a region where no white man had
+ever been before. Grenfell had stumbled into the mouth of the
+Mobangi-Makua River. For more than two years Stanley and his followers
+had been travelling up and down the Congo, but they never saw--or at
+least they never recognized--this great affluent, which is larger than
+any European river except the Volga and the Danube. Grenfell forgot his
+missions for the time, became the zealous explorer, and kept on his
+course up the wide river until he was stopped by rapids, having left the
+Congo about 400 miles behind; and while he was threading the virgin
+stream Stanley was in England making his large map of the Congo, on
+which not a trace of its greatest tributary appeared. The distinguished
+explorer was the first victim of the swarm of discoveries which from
+that day for years made every new map of the Congo behind the times as
+soon as the next mails arrived from the river.
+
+Perhaps some of the other white men had seen the mouth of the
+Mobangi-Makua, and thought it merely an arm of the Congo enclosing an
+island; for this is the region of the sealike expansion of the river,
+where only a water horizon could be seen from either shore if it were
+not for the myriad islands that cut the river into scores of tortuous
+channels. There were white men on these Congo banks who neither saw nor
+heard of the fleet of vessels that passed them a few miles away,
+carrying the hundreds of men of the Emin relief expedition. Before
+Stanley came whole tribes on one shore had never seen the people who
+lived across the river.
+
+A little later in 1885 a steamboat was sent up the Congo to the mouth of
+the big river that enters it at Equatorville. No vessel could have a
+more pleasant mission, for this steamer was the bearer of loving letters
+from home and fresh supplies of European food for Wissman's party of
+explorers, who had been in the African wilderness for many months, and
+might be in sore need of succor. It was thought the party was quite
+certain to emerge from the great unknown region south of the Congo at
+Equatorville, and the reason for this belief is interesting.
+
+[Illustration: NATIVE VILLAGE WHERE WISSMAN STARTED DOWN THE KASSAI.]
+
+Many years before, Livingstone had crossed the upper waters of a river,
+the Kassai, now known as the second largest Congo tributary. Stanley
+believed the Kassai emptied into the Congo at Equatorville, and all the
+map-makers adopted his hypothesis. Captain Wissman and his comrades were
+sent from Germany to march inland from the Atlantic to the upper waters
+of the Kassai, and then to follow it to its mouth; and as this point was
+supposed to be at Equatorville, the mails and supplies for Wissman were
+sent there, and the officers of the steamer expected any day to see his
+expedition float into view.
+
+Wissman reached the upper Kassai, and discovered there a remarkable
+tribe, the Baluba, whose chief had cut down all the palm-trees in his
+country to keep his people from getting drunk on palm wine. This chief
+helped Wissman to hollow big canoes out of tree-trunks, and then he and
+many of his subjects, who engaged with the explorer as paddlers, set out
+with the white men down the unknown stream.
+
+Wissman expected that the river would carry him far to the north, but in
+a few days he was much surprised to find that he was travelling much
+further west than north. Day after day he floated further and further to
+the west, and after many weeks, and some curious adventures that cannot
+be told in this chapter, he reached the Congo. A few days later another
+stern-wheeler ascended the Congo, and at Equatorville pulled up to the
+shore alongside the waiting vessel.
+
+"What are you doing here?" asked the Captain.
+
+"Oh, we're waiting for Wissman, and it's high time he came."
+
+"Let's see; how long have you been waiting for Wissman?"
+
+"Well, we've been here a little over two months. We're running short of
+supplies ourselves, and if the party doesn't turn up here within the
+next week, we shall leave Wissman's mails and boxes, and go back to
+Stanley Pool."
+
+"Well, Wissman has the start of you. He's at Stanley Pool now."
+
+"You don't mean it! Reached the Congo? How long ago?"
+
+"Just a week."
+
+"Why didn't he follow the Kassai to its mouth, as he was ordered to do?"
+
+"He did. You see, this river here isn't the Kassai. The Kwa River is the
+Kassai. Wissman reached the Congo at Kwamouth over 200 miles south of
+here."
+
+More work for the map-makers. This story illustrates the surprises that
+came to Europe month after month from the Congo basin. The geographers
+had to pull to pieces most of their preconceptions about the lay of the
+land and the extent and direction of the rivers. The waters of the
+Sankuru, for instance, which Livingstone and Stanley had crossed in
+their upper part, were found to reach the Congo about 700 miles from the
+supposed point of confluence. Lakes that had appeared on the maps, on
+native or Arab authority, were wiped out. A part of the Lualaba, or
+western head stream of the Congo, was found to have no counterpart in
+Africa. The narrow gorge, forty-three miles long, through which it
+flows, walled in by perpendicular rock masses rising a quarter of a mile
+above the stream, resembles our great Western cañons. In these few years
+nearly all of our notions of Congo hydrography away from the main stream
+were completely changed.
+
+This was not all. While threading these numerous rivers in their little
+steamboats, the explorers found many new peoples who had been buried
+from the world's view in the dark Congo forests or on the vast inland
+plains. You have read of the ancient troglodytes and of the prehistoric
+lake-dwellers of Europe. Proofs of their existence are found among the
+earliest evidences of human life; but the Congo basin to-day has two
+large centres of lake-dwellers. Many thousands of people live in huts
+reared high on piles out of reach of floods; and a few lakes are dotted
+with these habitations, thus placed beyond the easy reach of enemies.
+
+The explorers discovered the widespread haunts of the Batwa dwarfs--the
+keen little hunters who had been seen when Stanley wrote his book, _The
+Congo_. Their researches proved that the Congo basin is the greatest
+hotbed of cannibalism the world ever saw. These and many other
+discoveries kept geographers on the alert. Thus the Congo basin has
+contributed a chapter to geographical and anthropological discovery that
+has scarcely been surpassed in importance or romantic interest.
+
+
+
+
+THE BROKEN CHARGE.
+
+BY JAMES BUCKHAM.
+
+
+  Would you hear of the bravest, coolest deed
+  Ever inspired by a nation's need?
+
+  Thomas McBurney--a Kansas-bred Scot--
+  Lay in his rifle-pit, waiting a shot.
+
+  Over him whistled the enemy's balls;
+  _Ping!_ and they struck in the rampart walls.
+
+  Suddenly out of the woods there broke
+  A line of cavalry gray as smoke.
+
+  A troop--a regiment--a brigade.
+  Oh! what a rush and a roar they made!
+
+  A wild, swift charge on the frail redoubt,
+  Carbines ready and sabres out.
+
+  Hither and thither, like frightened hares,
+  Fled the sharpshooters out of their lairs.
+
+  All save Thomas McBurney; he
+  Thought not first what _his_ fate might be.
+
+  Uppermost thought in his hero soul,
+  To save the fort, and the field control.
+
+  On they thundered, the cavalcade.
+  McBurney waited; his plan was made.
+
+  Fifty yards from his cairn of rocks--
+  Up he popped, like a Jack-in-the-box!
+
+  _Bang!_ and the leader's horse went down,
+  Neck outstretched in the wire-grass brown.
+
+  Over him tumbled a dozen more,
+  And the Colonel--his heart and his head were sore.
+
+  "Halt!" he cried, and the broken line
+  Stopped, strung out like a trailing vine.
+
+  Lo! in the valley's dim expanse
+  Tossing flags and bayonets' glance.
+
+  Re-enforcements! At double-quick
+  They cross the meadows and ford the creek--
+
+  Boys in blue, with their banners bright,
+  Just in season to turn the fight.
+
+  Thomas McBurney, as cool as you please,
+  Settled down on his dust-grimed knees.
+
+  To pray? Yes, thankfully--and to run
+  A well-greased cartridge into his gun!
+
+
+
+
+THE VANISHED ISLAND.
+
+
+"Let her go off a little, Ralph; you'll come out better in the end if
+you don't jam your boat too close to the wind. Keep your sail full, even
+if you don't point quite so high, and you'll go faster through the
+water, and get quicker to the place you're bound to."
+
+So spoke Grandfather Sterling one summer afternoon to his grandson as
+the old Captain's cat-boat _Mabel_ was being tacked across the bay,
+after a day spent in picnicking on one of a number of the little islands
+that were to be found within a few miles of the Captain's down-east
+home.
+
+"Grandfather," said Ralph, after letting the boat run up in the wind to
+ease her of a strong and sudden puff, "while we were fishing to-day you
+made the remark that the last time you had fished off an uninhabited
+island you were a good many thousands of miles from this part of the
+world. Is there a good story connected with it?"
+
+The old mariner nodded his head in the affirmative.
+
+"Yes, my lad, as usual I have an exciting yarn to spin you, even if the
+subject is nothing more than that of an uninhabited island, and
+to-night, after dinner has been tucked away, you may expect to hear it.
+But here's the dock, so mind your eye, and let me see you bring the
+_Mabel_ to it in ship-shape style."
+
+Ralph steered so as to go to leeward of the pier, calculating the
+distance his boat would reach after she had been thrown up in the wind,
+and a moment later he put the tiller down and gathered in his sheet. The
+_Mabel_ shot ahead with considerable speed for a moment, then her way
+became slower and slower, and when her snub nose touched the dock there
+was not enough force in the contact to send a tremor through the boat.
+
+"That's Boston fashion, my boy," said Captain Sterling, regarding his
+grandson proudly.
+
+That evening Ralph's grandfather related to the lad a story, which he
+named, "The Yarn of the Vanished Island."
+
+"It is so many years ago now that I dislike to tell you the number, for
+fear that you will think that I am growing old; so I will simply say
+that when I was a hearty young seaman I found myself out in San
+Francisco 'on the beach,' as sailors put it when they have neither money
+nor employment. I could have had both by remaining on the _Dove_, the
+vessel in which I had sailed around Cape Horn, but the treatment
+received on board had been so bad that all hands deserted as soon as she
+reached California. I made myself scarce until the ship sailed, then
+found a berth on a top-sail schooner called the _Queen_, that traded
+around the Sandwich Islands, bartering all kinds of trinkets with the
+natives for sandal-wood and the plumage of beautiful birds, which in the
+days I refer to were common on all the islands. The sandal-wood and
+feathers were carried to China and traded for tea, and this was taken to
+California and sold in different ports along the coast.
+
+"We were a happy family on board the _Queen_, for we all lived in a big
+cabin aft, and Captain Josiah Crabtree, the master of the schooner, who
+was a very eccentric and pious old fellow from Massachusetts, and who
+had made a considerable fortune in the trade, kept strict order among
+us, and seemed to consider himself responsible for our spiritual as well
+as earthly welfare, for he held church service regularly every Sunday
+morning on deck, and obliged all hands to be present. He quoted
+Scripture on all occasions, and always had an appropriate verse handy
+for anything and everything, whether it was a call to meals or an order
+to tar down the rigging. In spite of his peculiar ways we respected him
+so much that during the time I served on the schooner I never heard a
+profane word used--in fact, it would have been unhealthy to do so, for
+Captain Crabtree was over six feet in height, and was what is called a
+'muscular Christian.'
+
+"On the voyage I sailed with him, the master of the _Queen_ was to try a
+new plan. The supply of feathers had been falling off for the last two
+or three voyages, so he determined to go hunting on his own account. He
+explained to us that there were a number of small islands to the
+northward and westward of Hawaii that were uninhabited, and that he
+proposed to visit several of them, leaving a man on each, supplied with
+provisions, a shot-gun, and plenty of ammunition, and that during the
+short time we were to play Robinson Crusoe he expected us to shoot as
+many birds as possible, and to carefully save their feathers until he
+should come back and pick us up. This plan suited us first rate, for we
+looked upon it as promising a great lark, and were anxious for the
+_Queen_ to cover the twenty-five hundred miles of water that separated
+us from the little islands with their delightful climate on which we
+were to picnic.
+
+"After a long passage, for the schooner was a slow sailer, we sighted
+the first of the group, and one of the men was set on shore. I was left
+on the second one, and found it a paradise, with its snow-white beach,
+its beautiful, luxuriant vegetation and woods, and its balmy air laden
+with the odor of flowers. The Captain told me to look out for his return
+about a fortnight later.
+
+"As there was a rivalry among the sportsmen on account of a money prize
+offered for the one who secured the largest amount of gay-colored
+feathers, I soon got my little camp in shape, and settled down to
+business. So numerous were the birds, and so proficient did I become in
+the use of my fowling-piece, that by the time the two weeks had passed
+my store of treasure almost filled the large sack that I had brought
+from the schooner.
+
+"It was the night of the fifteenth day that I had been on the island.
+Ever since early morning the atmosphere had been so stifling that I had
+lain under the trees almost suffocated. The earth itself seemed to burn.
+It was not only the fearful heat and the absence of anything like a
+breeze, but there was a sulphurous smell in the air, and the water from
+the spring had tasted so hot and bitter when I tried to drink it that I
+was not able to swallow it.
+
+"At length I fell asleep, but only to be awakened by a fearful rumbling,
+followed a moment later by a crash that threatened to rend the island in
+twain. At the instant I took it to be thunder, but the starry splendor
+of the sky told me to look elsewhere for the cause. Almost before I
+could reason, the island commenced to rock and heave as though it was a
+ship at sea, and such an overpowering smell of sulphur was sent forth
+that I fell to the ground overcome with terror and faintness. During the
+remainder of the night the rumbling went on at times deep down in the
+heart of the island, but there were no more of the awful shocks and
+crashes that had stunned me in the beginning. Slowly the daylight came,
+bringing with it a gentle breeze that cleared away the sickening
+atmosphere, and then as the day broadened I made out, to my joy, the
+_Queen_ standing toward the land.
+
+"An hour later, when the schooner's boat touched the beach, I threw my
+bag of feathers into her and followed them. Then on our way to the
+vessel, which was hove to about a mile off-shore, I gave my companions
+an account of my last night on the island. When we reached the _Queen_ I
+rehearsed my story to the Captain. He was deeply interested in its
+details, and was in the middle of a scriptural quotation when he stopped
+suddenly, gave a cry, and pointed to the island.
+
+"We were not more than two miles from it at the time, so that it lay in
+full view from our deck in the brilliant sunshine. The dazzling white
+beach had disappeared, and the sea looked to be creeping up toward the
+trees that grew on the higher ground inland. As we all gazed, fascinated
+at the scene, the trees were sucked down slowly into the deep. Soon
+nothing but the tops of the tallest ones were left, and a moment later
+even these had entirely disappeared, and the ocean swept clear to all
+points of the horizon. The beautiful island on which I had lived for two
+weeks, and through whose woods and vales I had roamed, was swallowed up,
+to be seen no more forever, and amid the foliage in which I had lain two
+hours before the fishes were then sporting at the bottom of the
+Pacific."
+
+
+
+
+A WIDE-AWAKE COLLECTOR.
+
+
+One of the most enterprising stamp-collectors that has ever come to our
+notice was a small Swiss boy, who, during the late war between Japan and
+China, wrote the following note to Marshal Yamagata, in command of the
+Japanese forces:
+
+     HONORED MARSHAL,--I am only a school-boy ten years old. I live at
+     Berne. Upon the map, Switzerland is smaller than Japan. I was very
+     pleased to hear that you have been serving the Chinese as my
+     ancestors served their enemies. I hope that you will conquer all
+     China, and throw down the famous wall which prevents people from
+     going there. No doubt it is because of that wall that I have not
+     got any Chinese stamps in my album. You must have captured a lot
+     where you are, and I should be pleased if you would send me some.
+
+Unfortunately for this record of his enterprise, the boy's name is
+unknown to us, but it is stated that the Marshal, having received the
+letter, was so much amused by it that he took the trouble to secure a
+large number of Chinese stamps and to send them to his lively little
+correspondent.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: From Chum to Chum.]
+
+BY GASTON V. DRAKE.
+
+XI.--FROM BOB TO JACK.
+
+
+  LONDON, _July_ --, 189-.
+
+     Dear Jack,--We're still in London, and I guess if we stay here
+     until we've seen it all we'll never get to Hoboken. Talk about your
+     three-ringed circuses! London beats 'em all for side-shows and go.
+     When you think you've seen all there is to see you come across an
+     entirely new lot of museums, and parks, and hysterical spots to be
+     visited, and I'm just dizzy trying to remember what Pop told me not
+     to forget. What with St. James's Palace and Madame Tussaud's
+     wax-works, the Zoo and the National Gallery, I hardly know what I
+     saw where, except that of course I didn't see any wax-works at the
+     Zoo.
+
+     I think altogether the Zoo and the wax-works are the things I've
+     liked best of all about here. The National Gallery is pretty good,
+     but after you've seen about forty-two miles of pictures, some of
+     'em as big as a farm your eyes get tired and the back of your neck
+     sort of hurts. Still, I went through it because Pop said I ought
+     to, and whenever I have a nightmare nowadays instead of seeing
+     boojums and snarks I see old masters. You never saw an old master
+     did you? Well you needn't be in any hurry to. They aren't the sort
+     of things boys like very much. They're generally cracked so's to
+     look like a go-bang board and keep you guessing about what they're
+     pictures of, but Aunt Sarah who studied art last winter in Yonkers
+     says they're very educating, and I guess she knows. She says she
+     does anyhow and I don't think she'd say a thing that wasn't so. I
+     can't say that I've learned much from 'em except perhaps that the
+     pictures you and I draw in the backs of our spelling books aren't
+     so bad after all.
+
+     [Illustration]
+
+     Pop says he's learned one thing from 'em too. There used to be a
+     fellow named Gainsborough that painted acres of pictures every
+     year, and Pop says his things are fine and prove that theatre hats
+     aren't modern inventions and he's right about it. He's got several
+     pictures in this gallery that would drive me crazy if I had to sit
+     behind 'em at a matinee. There were some pictures there though that
+     I'd give house-room to if they asked me, by Sir Edwin Landseer.
+     Pictures of dogs. I tell you he could paint dogs that bark. It was
+     as much as I could do to keep from whistling to 'em and patting 'em
+     on the head, and one little spaniel was painted so well that it
+     seemed to me I could see his tail wag. Pop says that that was all
+     imagination, but Aunt Sarah said no it was art, and I let 'em argue
+     it out between 'em. Whatever it was though that painted dog's tail
+     wagged and it was worth travelling miles to see.
+
+     I was kind of disappointed with St. James's Palace. I expected to
+     see something like a transformation scene at Humpty Dumpty, gold
+     doors, and fountains, and bands playing and all that. You'd think a
+     Palace would be different from a factory anyhow, but it wasn't,
+     very. It didn't look any livelier than a jail would, and as far as
+     the outside of it was concerned I couldn't see that it was any
+     handsomer than the Grand Central Depot in New York, and not half as
+     big. They wouldn't let us inside. I thought perhaps the Queen was
+     asleep and they were afraid I'd whistle, but Pop said she didn't
+     live there any more, and I didn't blame her. I wouldn't either if I
+     could help it. I dare say it's very fine inside, with onyx
+     stairways and solid gold banisters for the children to slide down,
+     but outside I wouldn't give a cent for it. If it wasn't for the
+     soldiers with their big bear-skin hats and robin-red-breast coats
+     on I wouldn't have cared if we never saw it. The soldiers were
+     worth looking at, though most of 'em have such great big bulgy
+     chests you'd take 'em for pouter pigeons.
+
+     Right alongside of the Palace is where the Prince of Whales lives
+     and while we were looking at it he came out in a cab. He was
+     another disappointment. He wore a beaver hat just like Pop's, and
+     instead of having a scepter in his hands he carried an umbrella and
+     a cigar; just the sort of man you'd expect to meet on Broadway any
+     day of the year. Somehow it's hard to get used to the idea of a
+     real live Prince wearing a beaver hat and carrying an umbrella, and
+     it almost makes me sorry I came. I suppose if I could really find
+     out how to go to Fairyland and should go there I'd find all the
+     fairies dressed up in pea-jackets and sailor hats like most of the
+     boys we see nowadays, and probably they'd be playing ball or riding
+     bicycles instead of flying about on gossamer wings and swinging on
+     cobwebs.
+
+     [Illustration]
+
+     I spoke to Pop about it, and he said it was because the Prince
+     loved the people that he didn't dress up like Solomon. All the men
+     feel that they've got to dress like the Prince of Whales and if he
+     came out in a bathing suit and a blue plush smoking-cap on his
+     head, every man in England and New York that wanted to be
+     fashionable would do the same thing, and if he dressed as
+     magnificently as he knew how, in a diamond-studded dress-suit and
+     gold trousers, it would ruin everybody to go and do likewise. So he
+     wears clothes that are within the reach of all, which I think is
+     very nice of him, though I wish I could see him on Sunday when he
+     puts on his best. Pop says the way the men imitate him is very
+     funny. He says there was an actor once disguised himself as the
+     Prince who went riding through the Park on a donkey with bells on
+     its hoofs, and next day sixty-three of the most fashionable young
+     men of London appeared the same way, and when they found out that
+     they had been fooled they were so angry that they wouldn't go to
+     that actor's theatre again, but everybody else thought it was such
+     a good joke that they went and the actor made a fortune.
+
+     [Illustration]
+
+     I was going to tell you about the wax-works at Madame Tussaud's and
+     the Zoo in this letter, but Pop says it's time for me to go to bed,
+     because we are going to have a hard day to-morrow. We're going to
+     take a coach and drive out to Hampton Court and back, so I'll have
+     to close here. I wish you'd ask that Chicago boy if he's a
+     grand-nephew of Baron Munchausen. I told Pop about that
+     prairie-yacht and how Billie's seal-skin cap saved him from being
+     scalped, and Pop was very much interested and said he thought he
+     knew now who Billie was, and when I asked him who, he said the
+     grand-nephew of Baron Munchausen, a man who never told the truth
+     unless it was absolutely necessary.
+
+  Yours ever,
+  BOB.
+
+     P. S.--I've just got out of bed for a minute to tell you that you
+     never saw such monkies as they have at the Zoo. They look almost as
+     human as some of our Aldermen in New York, Pop says.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORTS]
+
+
+[Illustration: E. W. MILLS.]
+
+The success of the New Manhattan Athletic Club in managing the recent
+in-door interscholastic games has suggested the possibility of having
+the club manage the National meet in June. This would be a very good
+scheme, if practicable, because experience has shown that hitherto the
+chief obstacle in the way of success for scholastic meetings has been
+poor business management.
+
+It is not always possible for young men who have nearly all they can
+attend to at school to devote enough time to the business management of
+an athletic meeting to make it a thorough success; and it is therefore
+well, when possible, that this kind of work should be turned over to
+those who have more time and greater experience for the amount and kind
+of work required. The N.M.A.C. handled the recent games in a
+satisfactory way, and there is no reason to think that it would not
+carry out the plans for the National meet fully as well.
+
+At the in-door games the club assumed the entire financial
+responsibility, and offered prizes besides; but the managers would
+naturally feel some hesitancy about doing the same thing for an
+out-of-door meeting, where the weather must have so much to do with the
+attendance. The constitution of the National Interscholastic Association
+stipulates, I believe, that the prizes in each event shall amount in
+value to $25. The N.M.A.C. would not care to saddle itself with the
+responsibility of offering thirteen or fourteen sets of $25 medals,
+besides paying the rental of the grounds and other incidental expenses;
+but I am informed on good authority that the club would be perfectly
+willing to assume the responsibility of securing grounds and of making
+all arrangements for advertising and management, as they did for the
+in-door games, at their own risk. Should there be any surplus after
+these expenses have been defrayed, this would go toward paying for the
+prizes--no set of medals to cost more than $25; and should there still
+be a surplus after that, the money would be turned over to the National
+Association's treasury. The club, I am sure, does not wish to make any
+profit out of the enterprise.
+
+By such an arrangement, of course, there would be no shining medals on a
+table in the middle of the Berkeley Oval for the contestants to admire
+before they had been defeated in their events, and that would doubtless
+detract much from the interest in these games of our friends the
+medal-hunters; but on the other hand it would be a good thing if it
+could be announced that there would not be any medals on show that day,
+as this might keep these same medal-hunters off the grounds--which would
+be an advantage.
+
+The prizes, as I have frequently said, are purely a secondary
+consideration; and even if there was not enough money left over, after
+all the expenses had been paid, to get anything better than ribbons, the
+success of the National Association would not suffer, for the games are
+not held for the purpose of distributing gold and silver disks, but for
+the purpose of encouraging amateur sport and to bring about meetings
+between the strongest athletes in the schools of the country. At the
+Olympic games which have just closed in Athens the victors received mere
+olive wreaths, but these wreaths are as precious to them as if they were
+of gold or precious stones. It is not the value of the wreath itself, it
+is what the faded leaves represent that the true sportsman cherishes.
+
+[Illustration: H. J. Brown. O. Lorraine.
+
+D. P. White. O. E. Robinson. C. M. Hall.
+
+B. Kinney. E. L. Johnson. A. Robinson. S. L. M. Starr.
+
+W. L. Van Wagenen. H. W. Goldsborough.
+
+ST. PAUL'S TRACK-ATHLETIC TEAM,
+
+Winners of First Place at the N.M.A.C. Interscholastic Games, March 28,
+1896.]
+
+It would not be fair to ask the N.M.A.C. or any club to assume the
+responsibility for the rent of the grounds and other necessary expenses,
+and for the medals too. It is a sufficient risk for them to undertake
+to pay for the former, without going into jewelry. I hope the National
+Association's Executive Committee will see the advantage of having the
+games--their first venture--managed by a club or an association of older
+and more experienced men, and come to an understanding on some such
+lines as the N.M.A.C. may propose.
+
+A number of letters have come to this Department recently asking for
+suggestions about the construction of hard tennis courts. There are
+several kinds of these, the gravel court being by far the best of all. A
+gravel court is laid out by first digging about fifteen or eighteen
+inches down and filling this hole with broken brick, stone, and other
+coarse rubbish to within six inches of the top. Then coarse gravel of
+any kind should be put on and well packed down with a hose. This layer
+should come up to within two inches of the top. The last two inches
+should be filled in with fine screened gravel, and if this will not
+bind, add a little clay. On top of all this put from one-eighth to
+one-quarter of an inch of the finest red gravel--just enough to give
+color to the court. If too much of this red gravel is put on it will not
+bind well. It soon wears off, and then more should be laid on, and after
+this has been done a few times a court will keep its color all summer.
+
+The advantage of such a court is that it needs but little care. All you
+have to do is to sweep the gravel off occasionally, and water and roll
+it. A light roller is sufficient for this purpose, as it is expected to
+affect the top layer of the gravel only. The best way to mark out a
+gravel court is with an inch tape nailed down with tacks. Whitewash will
+not do, as it spreads. The least satisfactory kind of hard court is made
+of cinders. These pack fairly well; but a cinder court requires a great
+deal of care to keep in order, and is always a dirty place to play on,
+the balls becoming black after a few sets, and consequently useless.
+
+In nearly every city of the Middle West high-school associations have
+been organized during the past year or so, and these associations have
+done much toward encouraging school sport, and toward making the
+contests among their members more systematic than they have been
+heretofore. In Wisconsin interscholastic football and baseball games
+have until recently been carried on in a haphazard fashion, without any
+special attempt toward the formation of a union that might properly
+recognize the claims to supremacy of the successful team.
+
+Last fall, however, the initial steps toward placing all branches of
+sport on a sound and permanent basis were taken. The season of 1895
+clearly showed the need of an organization, and in December
+representatives from the schools of all the principal cities of southern
+Wisconsin met in Milwaukee and formed the Southern Wisconsin
+Inter-High-school League. The purposes of the organization are to
+develop all kinds of athletic sports in the schools, and to encourage a
+friendly rivalry in the various contests among its members. It also aims
+to correct some abuses which have crept into interscholastic
+sport--abuses which always will creep into any kind of sport where there
+is no restriction of government or organization. The league is divided
+into four circuits, each embracing the cities located in a certain
+territory, and the team which carries off the honors in its own circuit
+contests for the State Championship with the leaders in the other
+circuits.
+
+The constitution of the Wisconsin League, while placing many wise
+restrictions upon its members, leaves them free to arrange their own
+schedules of games and to manage their own affairs as may seem best and
+wisest to them. The league will open the season of 1896 with baseball
+and track athletics--the field day for the latter to be held in Madison
+on June 9th. The first interscholastic field day of the Wisconsin
+schools was held June 8th of last year, under the auspices of the
+Wisconsin University Athletic Association. Twelve high-schools were
+represented, and many good records were made, a brief account of which
+was given in this Department in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE for July 2, 1895.
+Much interest is being displayed now in the coming meeting, and
+doubtless even a better showing will be made than that of last season.
+
+It is in football, however, that the various schools of the league
+expect to see developed the hardest struggle for the championship. Last
+fall, although no organization had been effected, the contest for first
+place was a hard one, and the interest aroused in the schools was
+intense. Madison High-school justly deserves to rank at the head of the
+scholastic teams of that section. Her eleven won every game played. In
+fact, M. H.-S. has only been defeated once in football since it put an
+eleven into the field, three years ago. Of the eighteen contests in
+which it has engaged only one was lost, and that to the strong team of
+the St. John's Military Academy, which ought not to be classed as a
+school team, or played against by school teams, so long as the academy
+authorities sanction the methods at present in vogue at Delafield. The
+reason for M.H.-S.'s good record rests, doubtless, in the fact that
+Madison is an enthusiastic football town, and the school team gets much
+valuable experience and benefit from playing against the university
+eleven.
+
+The formation of the Twin-City Dual Interscholastic League, which was
+mentioned in this Department last week, was brought about by
+complications which arose in the league formerly composed of the St.
+Paul High, the Minneapolis High, and the Duluth High schools. The old
+league fell to pieces, and the new one was constructed on different
+lines, which promise to make the venture a success. I am glad to say
+that I was misinformed concerning the presence of the standing jumps on
+the card. Mr. George Cole is the President, Stewart J. Fuller, the
+Vice-President, George Angst, Secretary, and Chester H. Griggs,
+Treasurer. These young men have all been prominent for some time in
+interscholastic sport, and if they can control the policy of the league,
+it will doubtless earn a high standing among similar associations.
+
+The organization does not aim to control track athletics only, but will
+also look after the football and baseball interests of the St. Paul and
+Minneapolis schools. Track athletics have only been taken up
+systematically for the past five years in these two cities, and yet the
+schools have made rapid strides in this short time, and have sent a
+number of clever men to Eastern colleges. The St. Paul High-School has
+perhaps done better than most of the schools in that section in sending
+good men East. Winters, the well-known Yale tackle, Cochran, the
+end-rusher, and Langford, the stroke of the present Yale crew, are all
+graduates of that institution.
+
+The Inter-collegiate Association has stricken the bicycle race from the
+regular schedule of the spring games. It would be a very good thing if
+the New York and Brooklyn I.S.A.A.'s, and, in fact, if all
+interscholastic associations would follow their example. The New York
+and Brooklyn associations could combine and have a bicycle field day in
+the same week of the annual interscholastic meetings, or at any other
+time that might seem more convenient, and do away with the unpleasant
+bicycle event at the track-athletic meeting altogether.
+
+I suggest that the New York and Brooklyn associations combine, because
+it seems to me that it would be more profitable, on account of the
+larger number of entries, the greater interest, and the greater
+attendance such a union would command. Should the bicycle event be
+stricken from the interscholastic card, an excellent substitute would be
+a relay race. Relay races, as I have frequently said within the past few
+weeks, are becoming more and more popular all over the country, and
+sooner or later the relay race will become a standard event on every
+track-athletic card. Therefore, the sooner the interscholastic managers
+recognize this fact and put the race on their schedules, the better. If
+the entries for the relay races are so numerous in an association as
+large as the New York or Boston I.S.A.A. it would be possible to have
+the preliminary heats run in the morning, and have only finals at the
+games in the afternoon. This is a matter well worthy of consideration.
+
+  THE GRADUATE.
+
+
+
+
+[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.
+
+
+Portugal announces a new set of commemorative stamps to be issued
+shortly. The designs have been accepted, but the colors and values of
+the stamps have not yet been decided upon. Nicaragua has issued a set of
+postage-stamps--1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 centavos, 1, 2, 5 pesos. Also
+the same stamps surcharged "official." In addition, a new set of
+postage-due stamps--1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30, and 50 centavos, all in orange
+color--and an "Officially Sealed" stamp in blue. Porto Rico has changed
+the colors on the current set of adhesives, thirteen stamps in all.
+Honduras has also just issued a new set. The Cuban Republic stamps, 2,
+5,10, and 25 centavos, are sold by some of the smaller dealers.
+
+All the above would probably come under the ban of the S.S.S.S. as
+unnecessary, and issued for revenue only. The work of eliminating or
+diminishing "speculative" stamps is very slow; but progress is steadily
+made, and the number of new issues during the past six months is less
+than the average.
+
+     J. L. HUNTER.--The coin is a French 5 centimes of 1856. No premium.
+
+     H. VAUGHN.--The probabilities are that the Cuban Republic stamps
+     will be accepted by the great majority of collectors; but as yet
+     the advanced philatelists will not admit them in their albums. They
+     seem to me purely speculative, hence uncollectable. The $20 U.S.
+     revenue is worth $1.50; the 24c. and 30c. War Departments are worth
+     50c. and 30c. respectively.
+
+     F. B. KINGSBURY.--Your coin is worth 6c.
+
+     J. SCHMIDT.--The 24c. 1869 U.S., with reversed centre, is worth
+     $100 if in good condition.
+
+     G. B. SNIDER.--The only way the number of the sheet can be known is
+     by the printed margin of the sheet. All the stamps on a sheet are
+     identical.
+
+     R. S. CHASE, 30 Alumni Avenue, Providence, R. I., wishes to
+     exchange stamps.
+
+     R. F. T.--Stamps printed "Marca di Bolo" are Italian Revenues. The
+     25c. Venezuela 1892 are common; millions were printed and used.
+
+     F. H. HORTING, F. J. WATTSON, D. W. HARDIN.--The coins are common.
+     No dealer would pay a premium on them, as he picks them up in the
+     regular course of business at face value. When dealers sell they of
+     course ask an advance on face. They have to pay rent, clerk hire,
+     advertising, and their own living expenses.
+
+     E. L. H.--The 8d. yellow New South Wales, 1860 issue, is worth 25c.
+     The Canada 12-1/2c., 1868, is worth 18c.
+
+     D. W. H.--The millennial stamps have not been accepted as
+     collectable by the majority of philatelists; but, of course, that
+     is a matter to be settled by each collector for himself.
+
+  PHILATUS.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENTS.
+
+
+
+
+Arnold
+
+Constable & Co
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LADIES'
+
+FURNISHINGS.
+
+_House Sacques and Gowns,_
+
+_Fancy Trimmed Waists,_
+
+_Silk Petticoats,_
+
+_Changeable Silk and Fancy Effects._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CORSETS,
+
+PARIS LINGERIE,
+
+BRIDAL TROUSSEAUX,
+
+INFANTS' OUTFITS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Broadway & 19th st.
+
+NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Hartford Rubber Works Co.]
+
+
+
+
+  There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
+    And he found a crooked Hair-Pin against a crooked stile;
+  And if to see this pin yourself you happen to insist,
+    Just buy the CUPID Hair-Pin you'll find
+
+It's in the TWIST.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+By the makers of the famous DELONG Hook and Eye.
+
+RICHARDSON & DELONG BROS., Philadelphia.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Royal Baking Powder]
+
+A cream-of-tartar baking powder. Highest of all in leavening
+strength.--_Latest United States Government Food Report._
+
+ROYAL BAKING POWDER CO., NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  There are monarchs, there are monarchs,
+    Men of every clime and hue,
+  From the Czar of all the Russias
+    To the Prince of Timbuctoo;
+  Monarchs good and monarchs famous,
+    Monarchs short and monarchs tall;
+  But the _best_ is _our_ Monarch--
+  It's the Monarch of them all.
+
+Monarch
+
+King of Bicycles--A Marvel of
+
+Strength, Speed and Reliability.
+
+4 models. $80 and $100, fully guaranteed. For children and adults who
+want a lower price wheel the _Defiance_ is made in 8 models, $40 to $75.
+
+Send for Monarch book.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+MONARCH CYCLE MFG. CO.,
+
+Lake, Halsted and Fulton Sts., CHICAGO.
+
+83 Reade Street, New York.
+
+
+
+
+LOOK HERE, YOUNG PEOPLE!
+
+Until May 25th, we will accept =10 Cents= in payment of one year's
+subscription to =THE MONTHLY JOURNAL=, a literary magazine, published and
+edited by young people for young people. Address
+
+The Monthly Journal, New Brunswick, N. J.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Eight Numbers of the Franklin
+
+Square Song Collection contain
+
+1600
+
+of the Choicest Old and New Songs
+
+and Hymns in the Wide World.
+
+Fifty Cents per Number in paper; Sixty Cents in substantial Board
+binding; One Dollar in Cloth. The Eight Numbers also bound in two
+volumes at $3.00 each. Address Harper & Brothers, New York.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THOMPSON'S EYE WATER]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: BICYCLING]
+
+     This Department is conducted in the interest of Bicyclers, and the
+     Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject. Our
+     maps and tours contain much valuable data kindly supplied from the
+     official maps and road-books of the League of American Wheelmen.
+     Recognizing the value of the work being done by the L. A. W., the
+     Editor will be pleased to furnish subscribers with membership
+     blanks and information so far as possible.
+
+
+[Illustration: Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers.]
+
+Continuing the journey from where it was left last week, proceed from
+Lyons westward up hill, turn left at the top, and proceed downward, over
+the canal, and thence, keeping to the right, cross the canal again, turn
+sharp left up a hill, and cross the bridge into Newark. This is eight
+miles from Lyons. The road, except at the hills, is in very good
+condition. Leaving Newark, take the second turn to the right and cross
+the canal, but instead of proceeding straight ahead towards East
+Palmyra, turn sharp to the left, and crossing the canal again, proceed
+to Fort Gibson, three miles further on. It is better to take this road
+and to proceed direct to Palmyra over the turnpike, which is reached at
+Fort Gibson by turning sharp to the right, than to pass through East
+Palmyra itself, though it is possible to take the direct road, which is
+somewhat shorter, and proceed through East Palmyra. From Palmyra run out
+over Main Street, using the side-paths and side-walks where available,
+until the yellow mills are reached, thence cross the canal, turning to
+the right, and keeping to the left, follow the turnpike to Macedon.
+Macedon is twenty-one miles from Lyons, and from this point the route to
+Rochester is easily followed. The road is in good condition, and the
+rider will find no difficulty in keeping to the road from Macedon to
+Pittsford, and thence to Rochester itself.
+
+Entering Rochester, ride in through Monroe Avenue to Clinton Street,
+thence to East Main Street, where the Powers House will be easily found.
+Rochester is another place where there is great interest taken in
+bicycling. There are several good routes in the vicinity of the city.
+One of these is to Elmira, the route being to return, as already
+described, to Pittsford; thence proceed to Canandaigua, to Reed's
+Corners, Gorham, Ferguson's Corners, Penn Yan, Milo, Dundee, Rock
+Stream, Reading Centre, Watkins, Montour Falls, Mill Port, Pine Valley,
+Horseheads, into Elmira. This is a run of one hundred miles. Another run
+is to leave Rochester and run out to Sodus Bay, passing through West
+Webster, Webster, Union Hill, Ontario Centre, Ontario, Williamson,
+Sodus, and Alton, to Sodus Bay, a distance of thirty-nine miles. Another
+interesting but much shorter run is to proceed from Rochester out
+through Genesee Street to the end of the street, thence following the
+road along the banks of the Genesee River, through Buttermilk Hill, to
+Scottsville. Thence proceeding to Spring Creek Hotel, which is
+twenty-one miles from Rochester, you will get a good dinner for fifty
+cents. After dinner it will be interesting to go over the State
+Fish-hatcheries. There are several different routes of greater or less
+distance by which you may return to Rochester.
+
+     EDWARD J. BROWN.--There are several kinds of chain-cleaners, but
+     none of them are of very much use. An ordinary rag that is clean,
+     used with some care, is quite as effective as anything else.
+
+     NOTE.--Map of New York city asphalted streets in No. 809. Map of
+     route from New York to Tarrytown in No. 810. New York to Stamford,
+     Connecticut in No. 811. New York to Staten Island in No. 812. New
+     Jersey from Hoboken to Pine Brook in No. 813. Brooklyn in No. 814.
+     Brooklyn to Babylon in No. 815. Brooklyn to Northport in No. 816.
+     Tarrytown to Poughkeepsie in No. 817. Poughkeepsie to Hudson in No.
+     818. Hudson to Albany in No. 819. Tottenville to Trenton in No.
+     820. Trenton to Philadelphia in No. 821. Philadelphia in No. 822.
+     Philadelphia-Wissahickon Route in No. 823. Philadelphia to West
+     Chester in No. 824. Philadelphia to Atlantic City--First Stage in
+     No. 825; Second Stage in No. 826. Philadelphia to Vineland--First
+     Stage in No. 827; Second Stage in No. 828. New York to
+     Boston--Second Stage in No. 829; Third Stage in No. 830; Fourth
+     Stage in No. 831; Fifth Stage in No. 832; Sixth Stage in No. 833.
+     Boston to Concord in No. 834. Boston in No. 835. Boston to
+     Gloucester in No. 836. Boston to Newburyport in No. 837. Boston to
+     New Bedford in No. 838. Boston to South Framingham in No. 839.
+     Boston to Nahant in No. 840. Boston to Lowell in No. 841. Boston to
+     Nantasket Beach in No. 842. Boston Circuit Ride in No. 843.
+     Philadelphia to Washington--First Stage in No. 844; Second Stage in
+     No. 845; Third Stage in No. 846; Fourth Stage in No. 847; Fifth
+     Stage in No. 848. City of Washington in No. 849. City of Albany in
+     No. 854; Albany to Fonda in No. 855; Fonda to Utica in No. 856;
+     Utica to Lyons in No. 857.
+
+
+
+
+[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.
+
+
+TIME-SAVING HINTS FOR THE AMATEUR.
+
+When one has a quantity of aristo prints to mount which he does not
+intend to have burnished, he must be careful not to wet the face of the
+print, as it destroys the gloss imparted by the ferrotype plate. The
+usual method is to lay the print face down on a sheet of glass and paste
+it, cleaning the glass after each print has been mounted. A much simpler
+way is to take pieces of newspaper several sizes larger than the prints
+to be mounted, lay them in a pile on the table at the left hand, lay a
+print face down on the top piece of paper, paste it, and drop the piece
+of newspaper in the scrap-basket. Continue thus, using a fresh piece of
+paper for each print, till all the prints are mounted. The newspaper
+makes a good surface to paste on, as the print does not slip, as it does
+sometimes on the glass if not held very firmly. This way of pasting
+prints saves a great deal of time and trouble.
+
+Before beginning to mount pictures trim each one and lay it on the card
+on which it is to be mounted. Some amateurs when mounting pictures
+always mark where the picture is to be placed on the card. This is not
+necessary, for the eye can be readily trained to see when a picture is
+straight if the picture itself is properly trimmed.
+
+A simple arrangement for drying negatives is made by taking a stout
+wire, bending it in the middle at a right angle, and then bending the
+ends over to make short hooks, which clasp the edges of a plate. The
+wire should be bent close enough so that it is necessary to spring it a
+little to fit it to the plate. Put the wet side of the plate toward the
+wire, and set the plate on a shelf with the edge resting on the shelf,
+the wire supporting it somewhat after the fashion of an easel.
+
+In filtering solutions, unless one has a fluted glass funnel, the
+filtering paper adheres to the glass and allows the liquid to pass
+through very slowly. A simple way to hurry the process is to fold the
+circle of filtering paper together, and then fold it from the centre
+back and forth like a fan. Crease the folds so that they will remain,
+and when put in the funnel there will be spaces between the glass and
+the paper through which the solution will run very quickly.
+
+Films are quite inclined to curl both in the developing solution and in
+the fixing solution. This necessitates pushing them down into the fixing
+bath, and often causes much annoyance to the operator. If the hypo is
+put into a large glass tumbler the film may be curled round a bottle,
+and the bottle set in the tumbler of hypo, which will do away with any
+trouble of keeping the film down into the hypo. The bottle should be
+clean, and filled with water so that it will set flat in the tumbler.
+
+     SIR KNIGHT FRANK EVANS, JUN., 1116 Brown Street, Philadelphia, Pa.,
+     wishes to correspond with some of the Camera Club members. Sir
+     Knight Frank says he has some good formulas which he would be
+     pleased to send to the Camera Club. We shall be glad to have them
+     and to publish them. Send full directions for use, please, and
+     write on one side of the paper only.
+
+     SIR KNIGHT RAGEAN TUTTLE, Auburn, Col., asks where to get the
+     photographic supplies mentioned in the ROUND TABLE. They may be
+     bought of any reliable dealer in photographic goods.
+
+     LADY MANA M. MONAHAN, of Michigan, asks the address of a good
+     school of photography. At Effingham, Ill., is a school of
+     photography called Illinois College of Photography, where all the
+     branches of photography are taught.
+
+     SIR KNIGHT HERSCHEL F. DAVIS wants to know the right exposure for a
+     moonlight view, with largest stop, and if it will blur the plate to
+     include the moon in the picture. From a half-hour to an hour is the
+     usual time given for a moonlight view, according to the brightness
+     of the light. The moon may be included in the picture, and will not
+     have a halo; but the moon, instead of being round, will make a
+     longer or shorter streak on the plate, according to the length of
+     time it is exposed, as, of course, with the motion of the earth and
+     moon, it will have traversed quite a space in the course of an
+     hour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A CHANCE FOR AN EXPERIMENT.
+
+Have plants intelligence? Do they ever think? These are interesting
+questions that would have to be answered by the statement of an observer
+of the ways of pumpkins and melons. Says he: "Plants often exhibit
+something very much like intelligence. If a bucket of water, during a
+dry season, be placed a few inches from a growing pumpkin or melon vine,
+the latter will turn from its course, and in a day or two will get one
+of its leaves in the water."
+
+We do not vouch for the truth of this, but if there be any young
+gardeners among the readers of the ROUND TABLE it might make an
+interesting experiment for them next summer when they are pursuing their
+avocation.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENTS
+
+
+
+
+Comfort in Bicycling
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In every part a bicycle must be adjustable so as to fit the varying
+conditions of human anatomy. No bicycle so fully meets this requirement
+as the
+
+[Illustration: Columbia Bicycle]
+
+STANDARD OF THE WORLD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Columbia saddles are the standard of comfort, and the Columbia
+adjustable handle-bar is the standard of rigid, quick-adjusting
+completeness.
+
+Columbias in construction and quality are in a class by themselves.
+
+$100 to all alike
+
+POPE MANUFACTURING CO., Hartford, Conn.
+
+Many of the Columbia merits are described in the superb Columbia
+Catalogue. The book also tells of Hartford bicycles, $80, $60, $50, next
+best to Columbias. Ask the Columbia agent for it, or send two 2-cent
+stamps to us for postage.
+
+
+
+
+WALTER BAKER & CO., LIMITED.
+
+Established Dorchester, Mass., 1780.
+
+Breakfast Cocoa
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Always ask for Walter Baker & Co.'s
+
+Breakfast Cocoa
+
+Made at
+
+DORCHESTER, MASS.
+
+It bears their Trade Mark
+
+"La Belle Chocolatiere" on every can.
+
+Beware of Imitations.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LAUGHING CAMERA, 10c.
+
+The latest invention in Cameras. You look through the lens and your
+stout friends will look like living skeletons, your thin friends like
+Dime Museum fat men, horses like giraffes, and in fact everything
+appears as though you were living in another world. Each camera contains
+two strong lenses in neatly finished leather case. The latest
+mirth-maker on the market; creates bushels of sport. Catalogue of 1,000
+novelties and sample camera 10c., 3 for 25c., mailed postpaid. Agents
+wanted.
+
+Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro.,
+
+Dept. No. 27. 65 Cortlandt St., New York.
+
+
+
+
+Postage Stamps, &c.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+STAMPS! =800= fine mixed Victoria, Cape of G. H., India, Japan, etc., with
+fine Stamp Album, only =10c.= New 80-p. Price-list =free=. _Agents wanted_
+at =50%= commission. STANDARD STAMP CO., 4 Nicholson Place, St. Louis, Mo.
+Old U. S. and Confederate Stamps bought.
+
+
+
+
+$117.50 WORTH OF STAMPS FREE
+
+to agents selling stamps from my 50% approval sheets. Send at once for
+circular and price-list giving full information.
+
+C. W. Grevning, Morristown, N. J.
+
+
+
+
+JAPANESE POSTAGE STAMPS!
+
+Every one who sends me 20 unused stamps of his land will receive 20
+unused stamps, in good varieties, from Japan.
+
+Sekigyokuken, Mitsunosho, Bingo, Japan.
+
+
+
+
+=STAMPS.= Confederate free if you send for our Approval Sheets at 50 per
+cent. commission. Enclose 2c. stamp, and give reference.
+
+=DIAMOND STAMP CO.=, Germantown, Pa.
+
+
+
+
+=1000= Mixed Foreign Stamps, San Marino, etc., 25; 101 all dif., China,
+etc., 10c.; 10 U.S. Revenues, 10c.; 20 U. S. Revenues, 25c. Ag'ts w'td
+at 50% com. _Monthly Bulletin_ free. Shaw Stamp & Coin Co., Jackson,
+Mich.
+
+
+
+
+=125= dif. Gold Coast, Costa Rica, etc., 25c.; 40 U.S., 25c. Liberal com.
+to agents. Large bargain list free. F. W. MILLER, 904 Olive St., St.
+Louis, Mo.
+
+
+
+
+STAMPS! 100 all dif. Barbados, etc. Only 10c. Ag'ts w't'd at 50% com.
+List free. L. DOVER & CO., 1469 Hodiamont, St. Louis, Mo.
+
+
+
+
+U.S. Stamps and Coins. 8 dif. large cents, 50c.
+
+R.M.P. Langzettel, Box 1125, New Haven, Conn.
+
+
+
+
+CARDS
+
+The FINEST SAMPLE BOOK of Gold Beveled Edge, Hidden Name, Silk Fringe,
+Envelope and Calling Cards ever offered for a 2 cent stamp. These are
+GENUINE CARDS, NOT TRASH. UNION CARD CO., COLUMBUS, OHIO.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THOMPSON'S EYE WATER]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Swiss Wedding.
+
+     We have lived in Switzerland for five years, and have, of course,
+     seen a great many weddings among the people, but never one of those
+     grand affairs which are the talk of a small town for weeks. Last
+     autumn, while we were in Winterthur, we learned that a wedding was
+     to take place in the "Stadtkirche," bride and bridegroom coming
+     from two of the best old families. As both were millionaires (in
+     francs, not dollars), people expected something magnificent, so we
+     decided to go to the church to see what it would be like.
+
+     There are no private church weddings in Switzerland. Every one who
+     chooses may go to witness the ceremony, and the day we went the
+     church was full of people of every description--ladies and
+     gentlemen, as well as bareheaded peasants and children. It seems to
+     me that one must have an enormous amount of courage to get married
+     in Europe. The bride we saw had to submit to be stared at for a
+     good hour in church, and even then she was not allowed to go off
+     and rest.
+
+     When we had waited patiently for about half an hour the clock
+     struck one, the church doors were thrown open, the organ pealed
+     forth a wedding march, and in came the bride on the bridegroom's
+     arm. They walked up to the beautifully decorated altar, in front of
+     which were the seats reserved for the wedding guests, and here they
+     separated, the bride going to the places on the left of the aisle,
+     the groom to those on the right.
+
+     Then followed couple after couple, the ladies all in full evening
+     dress, and each separated at the altar also. When they were all
+     seated the minister preached a short sermon. Then the organ
+     accompanied a song sung by the bride's sister. This was very
+     beautiful, for there was also a violin obligato. Then the bridal
+     couple stood up and were married, after which they again parted,
+     going back to their seats. Some little children sang with the
+     organ, and then the ceremony was over, but not the wedding.
+
+     There was a grand dinner which lasted hours and hours, for between
+     each course there was acting, or tableaux, or dancing, and it was
+     not until late in the evening that the bride could depart on her
+     wedding journey, and very tired she must have been. Some people go
+     for long drives in the afternoon, if the day is beautiful. In this
+     case they all go bareheaded and in open carriages. The peasants
+     cannot always afford to drive, so simply take long walks, some to
+     the country, but the general preference is for the town. Here they
+     walk, two by two, through all the principal streets, going in at
+     some confectioner's for something to eat, and enjoying themselves
+     greatly. These brides generally dress in black with white veils (or
+     none at all), and artificial flowers in their hair. The girls are
+     always confirmed in black dresses in German Switzerland, and the
+     poor people wear the same dresses for their weddings. A very
+     thrifty custom, is it not? Swiss weddings may be very nice to Swiss
+     people, but I, for my part, prefer American ones, and if I ever
+     marry, I hope it will be in my own dear country.
+
+  MARIAN GREENE, R.T.F.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cryptography.
+
+     From very ancient times secret writing, known as cipher (from the
+     Arabic _sifr_, "void"), or cryptography (from the Greek "hidden
+     writing"), has been an important means of communication. In great
+     national crises, where absolutely secret communication was
+     necessary, it has saved much time and trouble. Charles I. wrote his
+     famous letter to the Earl of Glamorgan in cipher, consisting of
+     variously shaded and lengthened strokes of the pen. This letter was
+     afterwards deciphered, and proved to be a concession to the Roman
+     Catholics of Ireland, which, if generally known at the time, would
+     have caused serious trouble. Lord Bacon also made frequent use of
+     the cipher but even his ingenious methods have since been
+     discovered.
+
+     There are many methods. Perhaps the most common is the variety
+     found in one of the _Sherlock Holmes_ tales, where, in a seemingly
+     plain, every-day sentence, words set at intervals give the hidden
+     meaning. Poe's fascinating "Gold-Bug" is founded on the solution of
+     one of Captain Kidd's cryptograms. One can readily construct a
+     cipher requiring considerable effort to read. One of the best known
+     for common purposes is the "Dial Cryptogram."
+
+     [Illustration: A DIAL CRYPTOGRAM.]
+
+     On a six-inch square of card-board draw a circle containing
+     twenty-seven parts. In each write one of the capital letters of the
+     alphabet, including &. Also cut out a circle of card-board which
+     exactly fits the circle on the square. It should be edged by
+     twenty-seven spaces containing the small letters of the alphabet,
+     including &. Place this disk on the square and drive a pin through
+     the centre. Your correspondent having a similar dial, you are ready
+     to write. Suppose your message is the following:
+
+     _The box containing the famous Marston-Endive ciphers has at last
+     been found in a secret drawer of the billiard-room wainscoting.
+     Yours, Kelpee._
+
+     At the beginning you write the capital, and at the end the small
+     letters which are opposite each other when you have arranged your
+     dial. The inner circle is so placed, say, that _T_ and _m_ are
+     opposite each other. Beginning your message with _T_, and closing
+     with _m_ you would have:
+
+     _T. may vhq whgmubgbg& may zufhnl fuklmhg-ygxboy wbiaykl aul um
+     eulm vyyg zhngx bg u lywkym xkupyp hz may vbeebukx-khhf
+     pubglwhmbg&. rhnkl dyeiyy. m._
+
+     The stencil cryptogram is also a very good one, and is easily
+     managed. Take two squares of paste-board, and at irregular
+     intervals cut out narrow openings. Your correspondent being
+     provided with one of the stencils, you place your own on a sheet of
+     paper, and in the openings write your message. You then fill the
+     intermediate spaces with any words that will connect the whole and
+     make sense. Your correspondent places his stencil on the
+     message--and the meaning is clear.
+
+  VINCENT V. M. BEEDE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That Clever Kink.
+
+Did you find out how much that nobleman was worth? The answer is:
+
+£21,459. It is found by taking all of the letters in the passage quoted
+that are employed in the Roman notation--I, V, X, L, C, D, M--setting
+down their value in the Arabic notation, and adding all together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Music Rack.
+
+Good Stories about Chopin.
+
+     Frédéric François Chopin, born 1809, died 1849, very early showed
+     his sensitiveness to music, when only a baby prevailing upon his
+     parents to allow him to share the lessons given to his eldest
+     sister. Many tales are told of his performances as a child, but
+     perhaps the best is the one related by Karasowski, his biographer,
+     of his appearance at a public concert for the benefit of the poor
+     when he was not quite nine years old. He was announced to play
+     Gyrowetz's piano-forte concerto, and a few hours before he was put
+     on a chair, and there dressed with more than ordinary care, being
+     arrayed in a new jacket with an ornamented collar specially ordered
+     for the occasion. When the concert was over Frédéric returned to
+     his mother, who had not been present; she asked him what the public
+     liked best. "Oh, mamma, everybody looked only at my collar!" Little
+     Frédéric could do almost anything he wished with the piano, and all
+     his life, when in happy moods, he was fond of weaving fanciful
+     fairy tales and romances in music so beautiful and real that the
+     listeners were able to follow and understand by the mere tones
+     alone.
+
+     One evening his father was away, and there arose a tremendous
+     hubbub among the pupils which the assistant master was quite
+     powerless to quell. Frédéric came in, saw how things were, and
+     good-naturedly sat down to the piano. Calling the other boys around
+     him, he promised, if they kept quite still, to tell them a new and
+     most thrilling story on the piano. This at once quieted them.
+     Frédéric extinguished all the lights (for he was all his life fond
+     of playing in the dark). Then he sat down to the piano and began
+     his story.
+
+     He described robbers coming to a house, putting ladders to the
+     windows, and then, frightened by a noise, rushing away into the
+     woods. They go on and on, deeper and deeper into the wild recesses
+     of the forest, and then they lie down under the trees and soon fall
+     asleep. He went on, playing more and more softly, until he found
+     that the sleep was not only in his story, but had overcome his
+     listeners. On this he crept out noiselessly to tell his mother and
+     sisters what had happened, and then went back with them to the room
+     with a light. Every one of the boys was fast asleep. Frédéric
+     returned to the piano, struck some noisy chords, the enchantment
+     was over, and all the sleepers were rubbing their eyes and
+     wondering what was the matter.
+
+  MEREDYTH JONES, R.T.K.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kinks
+
+NO. 1.--A STORY.
+
+It was a rainy day. George, spoiling for something to do, said: "Say,
+Fred, here's a question you can't answer within five minutes, or ten
+either. Wan' to try?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"A lad, carrying a page of that circular to the printer who printed it,
+stubbed his toe. It hurt him so that he went to the same place the
+'three wise men of Gotham' did, and almost lost his life, because that
+which ruins many a field of wheat was in his drinking water, and he
+couldn't drink it. But he put all three together, ate it, and saved his
+life. What did he eat?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NO. 2.--QUINARY.
+
+  "With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver!
+  And folks who put me in a passion
+  May find me ---- to another fashion."
+
+In the above lines of a famous poem the word which fills the blank is
+the last syllable of the five words described below.
+
+  1. By bonnie braes in Scotland old,
+     My notes are heard with love untold.
+
+  2. Tars in hours of well-earned leisure
+     With twinkling feet would tread my measure.
+
+  3. A man in love with rocks and ore
+     Can by my aid know Nature's lore.
+
+  4. I'm hollow, and of sable hue,
+     And cousin to the chimney flue.
+
+  5. When sadly off the proper key,
+     A friend in need you'll e'er find me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NO. 3.--HEADS AND TAILS.
+
+Behead to censure, and leave to cripple; to gather, and leave to heat.
+Curtail to grieve for, and leave to fasten; a beverage, leave to beat; a
+damsel, and leave to succor; a color, and leave an edge. Behead the
+latter, and leave a quarrel. Curtail sly artifice, and leave a sledge;
+confusion, and leave an infant. Behead derision, and leave a grain; a
+flower, and leave a fluid; to study, and leave to gain.
+
+  RITA E. BOARDMAN.
+
+
+
+
+THE PUDDING STICK.
+
+     This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young
+     Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the
+     subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.
+
+
+Arabella's home is in a pretty little town twenty-five miles from New
+York. It is a place much liked by people who have children to bring up,
+for the schools are good, and the air is a tonic to breathe. Arabella
+told me last September that she must earn some money this year, and
+relieve her father, who had quite enough to do in paying her tuition
+bills. "If I can only make enough to buy my shoes and gloves and pay for
+my postage stamps and my car fares, I will be satisfied," the dear girl
+said. As this is her last year at Miss ----'s school, and the work is
+very exacting, I am afraid she cannot accomplish her end; but Arabella
+has perseverance in large measure, and she is a plucky girl, besides
+being graceful and charming.
+
+It happens that Arabella dances very well, and some of the mothers in
+her neighborhood wished their small tots to learn the steps. There was
+no teacher to be had for such babies, and so when my favorite girlie
+said they might come to her on Saturday afternoons and she would show
+them how to use their little feet in moving to measure, the mothers were
+delighted. Arabella's brother Will was obliging enough to bring his
+violin and furnish the music, and the class has been a great success,
+with the result that Arabella's pocket-book is very nicely filled.
+
+Another and perhaps a more agreeable field for money-making is one which
+Lilian G---- has found, or rather into which Lilian walked one summer
+morning. On her way to school she had to pass the house of two very dear
+old ladies, who lived by themselves, and pottered about in a pretty
+old-fashioned garden. Miss Betsey and Miss Annie were fond of the bright
+girls who two or three times a day walked past their door on the way to
+and from their classrooms, and they had their favorites among them,
+often stopping Lily, for instance, and giving her a flower or two to
+fasten into her buttonhole.
+
+One morning Lilian observed that Miss Betsey groped a little and felt
+about with her stick, instead of stepping briskly around the garden as
+she used to do.
+
+"My sister," Miss Annie confided to her, "is growing blind. We went to
+Dr. N---- yesterday, and he confirmed our fears. It is a cataract, and it
+cannot be operated on for a long time. What poor Betsey will do I don't
+know, for reading has been her great occupation and her one pleasure. I
+cannot read to her, for it hurts my throat to read aloud."
+
+"Let me come every afternoon, dear Miss Annie," said Lilian. "I'll read
+to Miss Betsey from four to five every day, and on Saturdays I'll come
+twice--an hour in the morning and another in the afternoon. I can do it
+just as _easily_!"
+
+Miss Annie's face lightened. "You sweet child!" she said. "If you will
+come, and your mother will let you come, Betsey and I will pay you two
+dollars a week for reading to us both."
+
+The rest of this chapter must go over until next week.
+
+  MARGARET E. SANGSTER.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Ivory Soap]
+
+    The beauty of a bride's trousseau
+  Is something that it need not lose,
+    If only maid and laundress know,
+  That Ivory is the soap to use.
+
+Copyrighted, 1896, by The Procter & Gamble Co., Cin'ti.
+
+
+
+
+HOOPING
+
+COUGH
+
+CROUP
+
+_Can be cured_
+
+by using
+
+ROCHE'S HERBAL
+
+EMBROCATION
+
+The celebrated and effectual English cure, without internal medicine. W.
+EDWARD & SON, Props., London, Eng. Wholesale, E. FOUGERA & CO., New York
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PRINTING OUTFIT 10c.
+
+Sets any name in one minute; prints 500 cards an hour. You can make
+money with it. A font of pretty type, also Indelible Ink, Type Holder,
+Pads and Tweezers. Best Linen Marker; worth $1.00. Mailed for 10c.
+stamps for postage on outfit and catalogue of 1000 bargains. Same outfit
+with figures 15c. Outfit for printing two lines 25c. postpaid.
+
+Ingersoll & Bro., Dept. No. 123. 65 Cortlandt St., New York.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THOMPSON'S EYE WATER]
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR BOYS
+
+By THOMAS W. KNOX
+
+The "Boy Travellers" Series
+
+Copiously Illustrated. Square 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $3.00 per volume.
+
+ADVENTURES OF TWO YOUTHS--
+
+  IN THE LEVANT.
+  IN SOUTHERN EUROPE.
+  IN CENTRAL EUROPE.
+  IN NORTHERN EUROPE.
+  IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
+  IN MEXICO.
+  IN AUSTRALASIA.
+  ON THE CONGO.
+  IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.
+  IN SOUTH AMERICA.
+  IN CENTRAL AFRICA.
+  IN EGYPT AND PALESTINE.
+  IN CEYLON AND INDIA.
+  IN SIAM AND JAVA.
+  IN JAPAN AND CHINA.
+
+_OTHER BOOKS BY COLONEL KNOX:_
+
+HUNTING ADVENTURES ON LAND AND SEA
+
+2 vols. Copiously Illustrated. Square 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $2.50
+each.
+
+  THE YOUNG NIMRODS IN NORTH AMERICA.
+  THE YOUNG NIMRODS AROUND THE WORLD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By KIRK MUNROE
+
+Snow-Shoes and Sledges
+
+A Sequel to "The Fur-Seal's Tooth." Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth,
+Ornamental, $1.25.
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR:_
+
+=THE FUR-SEAL'S TOOTH.--RAFTMATES.--CANOEMATES.--CAMPMATES.--DORYMATES.=
+Each one volume. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1.25.
+
+=WAKULLA.--THE FLAMINGO FEATHER.--DERRICK STERLING.--CHRYSTAL, JACK & CO.=
+and =DELTA BIXBY=: Two Stories. Each one volume. Illustrated. Square 16mo,
+Cloth, $1.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS, Publishers, New York
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: MAKING A BRONCHO OF IT.]
+
+  OH, TOMMY HAD A HOBBY-HORSE, ITS GAIT WAS SMOOTH AND FAIR,
+  TILL UNDER IT HE PLACED SOME STICKS, AND MADE IT BUCK AND RAIR!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE STRANGE STORY OF A RING.
+
+It is stated upon what appears to be good authority that in one of the
+parks in the Spanish capital city of Madrid a magnificent ring hangs by
+a silken cord about the neck of the statue of the Maid of Almodma, the
+patron saint of Madrid. This ring, though set with diamonds and pearls,
+is nevertheless entirely unguarded. The police pay no attention to it,
+nor is there any provision made for watching it by special officers,
+because it is not believed that any thief, however daring, would venture
+to appropriate it to his own use; and when the history of the ring is
+considered, it is hardly to be wondered at that a superstitious people
+prefer to give it a wide berth. According to the story that is told of
+it, the ring was made for King Alfonso XII., the father of the present
+boy King of Spain. Alfonso presented it to his cousin Mercedes on the
+day of their betrothal. How short her married life was all know; and on
+her death the King presented the ring to his grandmother, Queen
+Christina. Shortly afterwards Queen Christina died, and the King gave
+the ring to his sister, the Infanta del Pilar, who died within the month
+following. The ring was then given to the youngest daughter of the Duc
+de Montpensier. In less than three months she died, and Alfonso, by this
+time fearing that there was some unlucky omen connected with the bauble,
+put it away in his own treasure-box. In less than a year the King
+himself died, and it was deemed best to put the ring away from all the
+living. Hence it was hung about the neck of the bronze effigy of the
+Maid of Almodma, where it appears to be as safe as though surrounded by
+a cordon of police.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A CURIOUS REQUEST.
+
+In a Scottish church in Argyleshire the minister one Sunday morning
+astonished some strangers in the congregation by requesting the young
+men in the rear pews to smoke, "because the midges were so thick the
+services could not go on unless they were smoked out." The young men
+acceded to the request, and soon the obnoxious insects were driven away.
+It is said that this same clergyman once gave out a notice that upon a
+certain evening service would be held in the church, "weather and midges
+permitting."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+YOUNG AMERICA ABROAD.
+
+  Last year my fam'ly went abroad an' travelled all aroun',
+  An' saw 'most all ther' wuz to see in ev'ry for'n town.
+  They didn' stop much more'n a day or two in any place,
+  But jus' rushed on as if they'd been a-runnin' in a race.
+  They took me 'long, and must ha' made me walk a thousand miles
+  Through gal'ries and palaces of a hundred diff'rent styles.
+  They wouldn' stop at toy-stores, or take me out to see
+  The soldiers drillin' in the park, or th' wild m'nageriee.
+  Ther' wuzn't any fun fer me in all that sort o' thing--
+  'Cause, what'd I care 'bout lookin' at th' pictures o' the king?
+  There _was_ one place in Switz'rland where I _did_ have some fun
+  (If 't hadn't ben fer ol' Loocern I dunno what I'd done!).
+  The fam'ly'd all gone off ter climb a mountain in a train,
+  An' left me with the hotel man 'til they got back again.
+  I went out in the garden, in the afternoon, to play,
+  An' found another boy out there--been lef' behind, same way.
+  He said he wuz an English boy--an' I said mighty quick,
+  "_I'm an American boy, young kid, no English boy can lick!_"
+  So then he got to boastin' 'bout the things th't he could do,
+  An' said his school wuz bigger'n mine, which I said wuzn't true.
+  He said he had an uncle was a nobleman--a Duke;
+  I tol' him 's how them fam'ly things was jus' a kind o' fluke.
+  "_Well, England's got more soldiers than th' Americans ever had!_"
+  "_But we can lick 'em ev'ry time!_" That made him awful mad.
+  "_An' England's got a lot of ships, an' guns, an' cannon-balls...._"
+  "_But you 'ain't got nothin' half so good as our Niag'ra Falls!_"
+  "_You don't have 's many holidays_," went on the little fool;
+  "_On Guy Fawks day American boys all have to go to school._"
+  So I ran up an' said, "_You red-coat British kid_," says I,
+  "_There's one day you don't celebrate, an' that's the Fourth of July!_"
+  An' by that time I'd got so mad with all his monkey-trickin',
+  I jus' sailed in an' guv that English boy a good sound lickin'.
+
+  ALBERT LEE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: ANIMAL AMENITIES.]
+
+  A BLACK BEAR MET A GRAY FOX, AND TO HIM REMARKED, "GOOD-DAY,
+  IT SEEMS TO ME YOU'RE RATHER YOUNG TO BE SO VERY GRAY."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Harper's Round Table, April 14, 1896, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56766 ***