66 Although I cannot immediately give my co-operation to the founding of your city, you may depend on finding me when the right time comes. I shall not lose sight for a single day of this Professor Schultz My Alsacian whom you have described so well. birth gives me the right to know about his affairs. Whether I am near you or far away, I am devoted to If by any unforeseen chance you should be you. some months, or even years, without hearing from me, do not be uneasy. Whether I am near you or far away, I shall have but one thought, to work for you, and consequently to serve France." S° A YEAR OF POULTRY-KEEPING. OME time ago it was my lot to be living in an old house, of which part had formed the gateway of one of the Cistercian abbeys founded in England in the reign of Stephen. Perhaps this has little to do with the title of this paper, but the charm of the surroundings cast a bright gleam of interest on all that took place within the precincts. One of the daughters of the house attended to the poultry, but in a desultory sort of way, and was quite alone in her work, no other of the family caring much, or only now and then getting up a little feeble admiration of a fine brood of chickens or an unwonted number of eggs. Sympathising with her taste, and feeling a great wish to be helpful to her, I proposed that we should join together, and take to keeping poultry in a business-like manner. The poultry-house was in a field, through which a small brook ran that had formerly supplied the abbey fish-ponds (of which, indeed, the traces remained), and making its way under an ancient embankment, finally lost itself in the river flowing past the ruins of the abbey. So we had ready to our hands a poultryhouse, a grass run, a stream of pure water, and were allowed to have the scraps from the house. It was in the month of April that we began business by buying up from the house all the poultry, promising that, in consideration of the above advantages, we would supply the family with eggs at a very low price. Our capital was £4. This we expended on twenty-six fowls, at an average price of half-acrown each, some wire to go round a small run, which the gardener knocked up near the house, and various other requisites. We sold off some of the fowls, and, as money came in from the eggs, replaced them with others of a finer kind, as Cochins and cuckoos, our object being to make our expenses the first year by selling eggs and rearing chickens for the table. We were not without losses. In the winter some of the fowls suffered from inflammation of the eyes. We lost about seven from one cause or another. We reared sixteen chickens; more were hatched, but came to an untimely end in various ways. At the end of the year we stood thus. We began with twenty-six fowls, bought twenty more, and brought up sixteen chickens, making in all sixty-two. We sold twenty-nine and lost seven, so ended the year with the same number we began with, but of a more valuable breed, and with twenty fine chickens in a most flourishing condition. During the year we sold 1,900 eggs. When our accounts were audited at the end of the twelvemonth they stood as follows:: After deducting four shillings, one year's interest at five per cent. on the capital (£4), and carrying ten shillings and fourpence to the reserve fund, one pound was left to be divided between the two shareholders. We could easily have made a larger profit by rearing more chickens, but we have gained much experience, which will be of great use in future. We The food cost about a penny a head a week. fed them well, but carefully measured out the food to prevent waste and over-feeding. In the morning they had barley-meal or sharps, with bran and the kitchen refuse mixed up warm; and before going to roost they had barley alone, or barley and Indian corn. We only found it necessary to feed them twice a day. The result is that poultry can be made profitable. It is advisable to hatch out chickens in March or early in April, so that they will begin to lay as soon as their moulting is over, and to weed the stock before moulting begins, killing off the least profitable fowls while they are still fit for the table. A few words may be added on the different breeds of hens which we substituted for our first purchase. We were well satisfied with a batch of cuckoo fowls, bought at three months old, which rapidly grew up, and in November, when they were eight months old, we sold the cockerels for the table to great advantage. They were not only tender, but almost as large as a turkey poult. The hens lay very well, fine yellowish eggs, and are good mothers, but want to sit often. We had also silver-spangled Hamburgs and Cochins, both kinds laying well. We can also speak well of the black Hamburgs; there are no better layers, and, after moulting, they will lay well throughout the winter. Darieties. The UNITED STATES LIFE-SAVING SERVICE. The report of the General Superintendent of the Life-saving Service of the United States has been published for the usual fiscal year. operations of the service during the year were confined to 148 stations-116 of them being on the Atlantic coast, 30 on the lakes, and two on the Pacific coast. There were during the year within the limits of the operations of the service 171 disasters to vessels. On board these vessels were 1,557 persons. The estimated value of the vessels is 1,879,063 dols., and that of their cargoes 745,672 dols., making the total value of the property involved 2,624,735 dols. The number of lives saved was 1,331, and the number lost 226. Of the latter number 183 perished in the disaster to the United States steamer Huron and the steamship Metropolis-98 in the former, and 85 in the latter. The number of shipwrecked persons sheltered and succoured at the stations during the year was 423. The total value of property saved is estimated at 1,091,375 dols., and the amount lost at 1,527,360 dols. These statistics show that the disasters of the last year were greater in number and severer in charaeter than the service has ever before encountered. SPARROWS IN AMERICA. The sparrow, one of the English emigrants to this country, has been the subject of almost as much controversy as the Chinese. Whether he is a good bird or a bad bird, whether he eats the worms and spares the cherries, or the reverse, appears still to be an unsettled question. We have another testimony. Mr. E. J. Lowe, the astronomer, writes to the London "Times "Thirty-five years ago a countryman left here for Australia, taking with him all our popular hardy fruits and vegetables; but the produce was yearly destroyed until the English sparrow was introduced, after which there was plenty of fruit. Waterton calculated that a single pair of sparrows destroyed as many grubs in one day as would have eaten up half an acre of young corn in a week."--New York Observer. LAKE NICARAGUA.-The steamer Coburg has, after several unsuccessful attempts, at last forced a passage up the River San Juan from the sea to Lake Nicaragua. This feat cannot fail to have the most important results in extending the trade of this portion of Central America, and will no doubt give a fresh impetus to the plans for the construction of an interoceanic canal by this route. The length of the River San Juan, from its mouth to its outflow from the lake, is sixty-three miles; the lake itself is about fifty-six miles in length, leaving sixty-four miles-the remainder of the distance across the isthmus-to be cut artificially. The cost of the undertaking has been estimated at 100,000,000 dols., or £20,000,000 sterling. In consequence of the successful enterprise of the Coburg, steam navigation may be said to be established between Grenada, the Bay de la Vierge, San George, Fort San Carlos, and other towns, and direct communication will be maintained between Greytown and Grenada. The former town, which is already a central port of call for steamers, will benefit largely from the increased trade which it must receive.-Times. HIGHLAND TRADITIONS.-In their conversations the heroic actions, the wise or humorous sayings, the enterprises, the labours, the talents, or even the sufferings of their ancestors, are perpetually remembered. These are so often and so fondly descanted on, where all the world abroad is shut out, that the meanest particulars become hallowed by their veneration of the departed, and are carried on from father to son with incredible accuracy and fidelity. I must be supposed to mean such anecdotes as did honour to the memory of their ancestors. Departed vice and folly sleep in profound oblivion. No one talks of the faults of conduct or defects in capacity of any of his forefathers. They may be, perhaps, too faithfully recorded by some rival family; but, among a man's own predecessors, he only looks back upon sages and heroes. And even among the lowest classes a man entertains his sons and daughters in a winter night by reciting the plaintive melody or mournful ditty which his great-grandmother had composed on the death of her husband, who had lost his life crossing an overswelling stream, to carry, in time of war, an important message for his chief; or of her son, who perished in trying to bring down the nest of an eagle, which preyed on the lambs of the little community-or who was lost in the drift, while humanely searching for the sheep of a sick or absent neighbour.—Mrs. Grant, of Laggan. DUKE OF KENT.-A German-Jew paper, the "Israelitische Wochenschrift," has published the following historical reminiscence: "In the year 1816, under the nominal rule of George III, his third son, Edward, Duke of Kent, settled in Brussels, in consequence of the unsettled state of his finances, and of the necessity of living more economically than was possible in England. Two years later he married the widowed Princess of Leiningen, with whom he subsequently resided at her Castle of Amorbach, in the Odenwald. There the prince was visited by Moses Montefiore (with whom he was acquainted), in order to arrange some financial matters, and during this visit the last-mentioned personage took the opportunity of calling the attention of the royal duke to an expected change in the occupancy of the English throne, and advised him, therefore, to return to his native country. The duke was, however, unwell, and postponed his departure, being desirous of awaiting his recovery before introducing his consort at the English Court. Montefiore then betook himself to the duchess, and urgently pressed on her notice the fact that no one could be heir to the throne unless he or she were born in England; that, under the circumstances in which she was then situated, she owed it to herself and to her coming child at once to repair to England. He reminded her that the death of George III was shortly to be expected; that both the Prince Regent and the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV) were childless-the Prince Regent had lost his only after the two princes just mentioned, the throne would devolve child, the Princess Charlotte, in 1817; and that, consequently, on the Duke of Kent and his descendants. So earnestly did Mr. Montefiore press his point, especially with reference to the necessity for the heir to be born in England, that the duchess followed his advice, and urged her husband to accompany her to England. On the 24th of May, 1819, she gave birth to a daughter, who, eighteen years later, succeeded to the throne as Queen Victoria. This circumstance, concludes our contemporary, was the result of the sensible advice given by Moses Montefiore, and in part accounts for the esteem in which the venerable baronet is held by the Court." DESIGN AND BEAUTY IN CREATION.-The adaptations of natural objects, the wonderful contrivance, order, and beauty everywhere apparent in nature, it is at once the duty and pleasure of the true naturalist to maintain. I remember that in younger days, before I had decided whether biological or geological studies had the greater attractions, I had occasion to dissect a ruby-throated humming-bird; and I recall as vividly as of a thing of yesterday the impression which that marvellous structure made on me. To see all the parts of the highest type, in a mechanical point of view, of the vertebrate animal, condensed into a little creature whose solid body is not so large as the last joint of one's little finger, and to think of the power, the swiftness, the grace, the varied instincts and intelligence and feeling manifested in that tiny frame-all this was sufficient to have made one worship the beautiful little fairy, as some of our southern aborigines actually did, were it not subject to accident, to death, and to decay, and were it not an obvious manifestation of a higher power. Whoever has rightly appreciated the structures and powers of a humming-bird has been introduced to a miracle of design. The multiplication of that miracle in hundreds of dissimilar species by no means lessens its significance. Only a mental organisation diseased can see the universe as a chaos or a failure; but we must learn to know that, after all, it is but a faint shadow of the invisible glory, and it would be an equally fatal mistake to exalt it into a god, or because of its necessary imperfection to fail to perceive its Divine original.-Principal Dawson. BARING FAMILY.-The origin of the Barings in England is to be traced to Johan Baring, son of a Lutheran pastor in Bremen. Johan, when still a lad of sixteen or seventeen, came to England, engaged for a few years in clerkly duties, studied hard, amassed a little money, and finally settled down as a cloth merchant and manufacturer in a little village near Exeter. He had four sons, and the third of them, Francis, born 1740, came to London, where, after finishing his education at Mr. Fuller's academy in Lothbury, he set up in business as an importer of wool and dye-stuffs, also acting as agent for the original family cloth factory. "Starting," writes Mr. Frederick Martin, with a fixed determination to become rich, and having a fair amount of money to begin with, he was uniformly successful in all his designs. Nothing failed that he undertook, and whatever he touched became gold. Having amassed a fortune by dealing in cloth, wool, and dye-stuffs, he resolved to quintuple the fortune by dealing in money itself—that is, to be a banker. As was natural, the successful man became also the honoured man-a leading director of the East India Company, and the friend and adviser of the Premier, Lord Shelburne, who invariably followed his counsels in matters of finance. After obtaining a seat in Parliament for Exeter, the son of Johan Baring was made a baronet, under patent of May 29th, 1793, by William Pitt, Shelburne's successor in the Government after the short interregnum of the Duke of Portland. Valuing the friendship of the shrewd man of finance, William Pitt, as well as the Earl of Shelburne, listened to the counsel of Sir Francis Baring, both statesmen delighting to style the reputed possessor of two millions on all occasions the prince of merchants."—City Press. glass with Mr. Chaffin; and Lucy, taking him at h's word, or perhaps on the contrary, doubting his resolution, took away the bottle and locked it up. Mr. Chaffin thought it was rather a shabby thing to do, but made no remark, and as soon as he had emptied his tumbler rose and bade them good night. "You'll go a step of the way with me, won't you?" Mr. Chaffin said, as Dean opened the door for him. The latter assented, and they walked along the shore together towards the Jolly Dolphin. PRICE ONE PENNY. "Yes," said Chaffin, surveying the shipyard with the house and garden adjoining by the light of the moon, which was nearly full-"Yes, you have a nice place here; but you will soon be built in. This is the direction in which all the chief improvements I will be made. The shipyard will be quite out of place here after a year or two." "It will last my time, I dare say," said Dean. "I'll tell you now what I should do if I were in your place," said Chaffin. "I should look out for a bit of ground at the other end of the town; you could get a bit there cheap, and it would answer your purpose quite as well as this, or better. Then you could sell this for a lot of money, and clear a good round sum by the exchange." "But I don't want to sell," said Dean. "I won't sell, I tell you." "Yes you will," Chaffin replied. "Wait a bit; you'll have to shift your shipyard anyhow. Why, there will be a terrace all along in front of it very likely." 66 They can't turn me out," said Dean; "it's my freehold." "An Act of Parliament can do anything. That's why I am advising you to be prepared for it, and to look out for another site in time." They walked on together until they came to Mr. Chaffin's inn. "Come in," said the contractor. "No, I thank you." "Oh yes, come in." Mr. Chaffin took his companion by the arm and led him only half resisting in to the inn parlour. He had resolved to show this uncouth shipbuilderfellow, as he called him mentally-a good example of hospitality. He had allowed the brandy bottle to bo locked up after the first glass; now he should have as many glasses as he liked at Mr. Chaffin's expense, to teach him better manners. That would be rendering good for evil the contractor thought. "What will you take?" Mr. Chaffin asked, as soon as they were seated. Dean would have again refused, but after a feeble protest submitted to Mr. Chaffin's importunity. It is needless to describe the scene that followed. At a late hour Joshua Dean left the Jolly Dolphin with an uncertain step, and went towards home; his eyes were bent upon the ground, his hat slouched over his face, and he paused from time to time to steady himself against a rail or a house. Sufficiently sober to be conscious of his own degradation, he shrank from the shame of approaching his own door, where, as he well knew, his sister would be watching for him, and loitered by the way altogether miserable. Mr. Chaffin looked after him with mingled feelings of pity and contempt. Why should he be so overcome by a glass or two? he thought. He had taken a great deal more himself, and was none the worse for it. It was a great mark of weakness to be so easily upset. Mr. Chaffin expressed this opinion to Mr. Brimmer, who also came to the door to witness his customer's departure. "Yes," said Brimmer; some men can't stand nothing. Now that there poor fellow will be so upset by what he has took, that he won't get over it for a week or ten days, or maybe a fortnight." "You don't mean that?" said Chaffin, with a slight feeling of remorse. "I don't mean that it will make him downright ill sir; but to-morrow morning he'll be here again as soon as I'm open; and he'll go on, nobody knows how long. He can't help it. It's some months, though, now since he tasted a drop of spirits, and I wondered to see him here to-night. He ought to learn to drink in moderation. It's men like him as brings us publicans into disfavour. Not as he ever takes a great deal; a little is sufficient to upset him. You could see that yourself, sir, couldn't you?" Yes, Mr. Chaffin could see it; Mr. Chaffin had seen it after the first glass at the inn; but he had gone on urging him to take more, nevertheless; he could not be inhospitable; it was not his fault if other men did not know when to stop. He was not answerable for other men. With this sop to his conscience he wished Mr. Brimmer good night, and went upstairs to bed, well satisfied on the whole with the day's proceedings. He had found water, and was confident that there would be plenty of it wherever it was properly sought for. The Sandy Frith Company would go on and prosper. He would keep his eyes on Dean's bit of freehold, and entertained but little doubt of being able to secure it for himself by-and-by. He should make a lot of money by the place, he said to himself as he turned into bed. Yes; he had done a good day's work. The next morning he went by an early train to London; but before a week had elapsed he was again upon the spot. A great number of workmen followed him and were employed immediately upon different parts of the estate, some sinking wells, others carting away soil, and others preparing materials for building. Mr. Chaffin completed his arrangements for renting the stone quarry, and began to get stone there in large quantities; and sites were laid out all over the little town, with boards to signify how they were intended to be occupied. These important works required Mr. Chaffin's frequent attendance at Sandy Frith, and he missed no opportunity of seeing Joshua Dean, who would often spend an evening with him at the Jolly Dolphin. Mr. Brimmer's evil augury had been realised, and the poor man seemed to be under a spell; despising himself for his weakness, he appeared to be unable to resist the intolerable craving for stimulants which came over him at all hours of the day, and for several weeks together he was either wretchedly depressed or unnaturally elated. Lucy could do nothing with him. He would listen to her eager remonstrances with shame and contrition, and hold out perhaps for a day or two against temptation, but would give way as last, and run to greater excess than before. Mr. Chaffin seemed to think it was no affair of his. The poor man never showed himself to him in a state of absolute intoxication, and the contractor might have thought he was doing him a kindness by offering him just one glass, when he saw him depressed and apparently pining for it. At all events "he could not be inhospitable," that was his plea; and Joshua Dean yielded to the tempter again and again, even while loathing himself and resolving with all his power of will to yield no more. Meantime business went on badly at the shipyard; Dean had to find money for materials and wages, and the work that he had on hand remained unfinished, or if sent away, was returned as unsatisfactory. Many conversations took place as to the sale of the shipyard, and Dean began to listen to the proposal. It would be a good thing, he thought, to break away from the place, and begin life again somewhere else, away from the reach of temptation, as if such a thing were possible. Mr. Chaffin offered him a good price for the property; he could make provision for his mother and sister, he thought, and go abroad somewhere, where there was no Jolly Dolphin and no Chaffin. He might ship as a seaman on board some temperance vessel. These and similar plans were turned over in his confused and troubled mind one after another, all springing from the same source, self blame and self-dissatisfaction. The result of all was that, one evening when Dean and the contractor were together at the Jolly Dolphin, pen and ink were called for and Mr. Brimmer was invited to come into the parlour and drink a glass of his own brandy and to sign his name as a witness to a contract or agreement for sale between Joshua Dean of the one part, vendor, and Daniel Chaffin of the other, purchaser, whereby the former agreed to sell and the latter to buy and purchase all that plot and parcel of land with the buildings and tenements thereon, called the shipyard, situate and being at Sandy Frith, etc., etc., at and for the sum of etc., etc. "It is a deal of money," Mr. Chaffin said, with a grave face, as he folded up the document, and put it in his pocket-"a deal of money, Mr. Dean." The vendor did not show any signs of exultation. He knew too well what he had done, but was hardly able to review all the conditions and consequences so critically as might have been desired. "Yes," he thought to himself, "it is a good price, but I have sold my birthright." There was a bottle upon the table, and he helped himself again to its contents before leaving the inn. He did not intend to tell his sister what he had done; it would make no difference to her, he argued. He was to continue to occupy the house and shipyard at a moderate rent for a year or two at least. Mr. Chaffin looked to the future; he did not want to do anything with the property until the new buildings in its vicinity should have added something considerable to its value. He had bought it wholesale, as it were, and hoped to sell it retail by the yard or foot by-and-by. In the meantime Joshua Dean was to occupy it as before, and the sale was to be a secret. Mr. Brimmer even was not supposed to know the contents of the deed which he had witnessed, though he must have had a shrewd suspicion of it when he saw the money payment which formed the deposit handed over, and the receipt endorsed. "Yes," Mr. Chaffin repeated, when he was alone, "it is a deal of money; but if he takes the bulk of it in Sandy Frith shares, as I have no doubt he will, it will suit my purpose well. I hope he will be steady now, and stick to work again. I'm afraid he has not been doing much good lately. I am sorry for his sister, as she seems to be dependent on him, and for his mother, too, at her age. Eighty-one or two she is I know. She can't live long; I promised to let her occupy the house as long as she wants it, and I won't disturb her if I can help it; it won't be very long, I dare say. I hope Dean will take a good turn and be steady now. I do hope he will, I'm sure." CHAPTER XIV.-NE JOCO QUIDEM Pray you let us not be laughing-stocks to other men's humours. WE must now return for a short time to Tom Howard and his school experiences. Although his adventure with the brick was passed over without notice by the masters, the fame of it spread throughout the school, and created a great sensation. Boys from other houses stole up to the dormitory at for bidden hours to look down at the spot where he had made his perilous descent, and peeped through the head master's garden gate to look up at it. Howard rose at once to a high place in their estimation, and they began to inquire among themselves where he had come from, and by what means he had acquired such activity. His father is a sailor," said one. "I thought he was a pastrycook," said another. "He is an East India man," said a third. "An East Indiaman is a ship, but Howard comes from India all the same." "That will account for it. There are very big trees out there, and they can all climb trees in Africa." "Africa, you gander!" "Well, Asia, then. It's all the same as far as the climbing goes. There used to be a great tree in the Crystal Palace, which had been brought from one of those places abroad, a thousand feet high, or something like it. I dare say Howard could have swarmed up to the top of it." So the boys entertained each other with mingled facts and fancies. Tom was not fond of showing off, and did not seek notoriety, but he was required after this to climb ropes and spars in the gymnasium. He had been an adept at this in one of the London gymnasiums, having taken great delight in everything that reminded him of his experiences on board ship, and fancying himself again a sailor, as he went up and down the ropes and ladders. The monitors at Abbotscliff, who had the management of the athletic sports which were exhibited every year in public in the spring, looked upon Tom as a great acquisition, and resolved that he should go into training in due time, and carry off a prize or two for his activity and daring. Who it was that put the brick into Chaffin's bed was never discovered. Little Martin had the credit of it, but denied it, and Tom believed him, though some others did not. The custom of "greening new-comers was brought by these events under discussion; some of the boys maintaining that it was silly and childish; anybody could do it who had impudence enough, and who did not mind about telling lies. Others defended the practice, denying that there was any harm it. It was only done for fun, and could not hurt anybody, they said. "It sharpens a new fellow's wits," said one, "and" makes him look about him." "There's no wit in it," said another, "so it can't put wit into anybody else. Iron sharpeneth iron;' but a 'soft' can green another; look at Chaffin !" "Grown-up men do it," the former speaker replied. 'It's only like making April fools, or sending a simpleton to buy strap oil at a cobbler's." "Such customs are more honoured in the breach than the observance," was the rejoinder. "In Scotland, a poor half-witted fellow is sometimes sent about with a note, in which is written, 'Send the bearer further,' and each person to whom he delivers it acts upon the hint, so that he may go to a dozen places before he finds any one good-natured enough to tell him that he is a gowk: hunting the gowk,' they call it, but, as an old rhyme says, "Tis a thing to be disputed, |