they put him on a training ship, and now he dresses in niced sailor close, and is a lot fatter than me. I'd go and steal some black pudden if it wasn't a sin. It's no good of stealin bits of sugar and little things like that, becose they only box yer ears for it, and never think of making you sailors. It does rile me so. Sugar is just as good as black pudden, so why can't they send you to the training ship for stealin of it? "I sometimes draw ships and then color them yeller and blue with my penny box of paints. I can draw steamers best becose you havnt to draw no sails, but only two black lines for funnils, and its so niced and easy to draw the smoke a comin out. You just twerl yer pencil round and round, and its done right. Before I seed the ocheant I used to make fishes swimming all round the steamer; but I don't now, because I never seed one single fish swimming round them steamers at Portsmouth, much less chivyin one another. It makes me riled to have to leave them out, but what's the good of putting them in if they're not theer. The lesson what you learn is, allways to be kind to sailors, and not to say as the sea can jump as high as the clouds, when it can only just shift about like shavins." One of the most interesting lads that ever passed through my school was little Johnny Slinn. I disguise the name in this case, as Slinn is now a rising young come. dian on the London boards. Johnny's powers of mimicry, even as a schoolboy, were indeed wonderful. A favorite pastime with him was to gather a semicircle of boys round him, and then defy them to "hold their faces without laughing" whilst he contorted his features into all kinds of grotesque expressions and shapes. The little band of subjects would endeavor to fortify themselves against the embryo actor's cajoleries by pursing up their features, biting their lips till they almost bled, or essaying to fix their thoughts on extraneous things. But it was all of no avail. Before Johnny had subjected them for one short minute to his facial pantomime, they would all be compelled, one after the other, to relax their features and break into uncontrollable laughter. Johnny generally commenced operations with his victims by grinning savagely at them all for a second or two, and then suddenly bursting into a most comical giggle. This preliminary farce itself ordinarily cleared off about half of them, and these were instantly pulled out of the row by Johnny's "manager," or "bully," and put by themselves against the wall. Johnny would then resume his attack upon the others by projecting out his lower jaw bulldog fashion, rolling his eyes like a ghoul, making his nose play up and down like a nibbling rabbit, causing his forehead to twitch like automatic parchment, and all the time giving vent to the most mirthprovoking sounds. One or other of these appeals proved irresistible to the risibility of his on-lookers, and in quick succession they were summarily summoned by Johnny's manager to fall back, till the whole semicircle had vanished. I once caught Johnny entertaining pretty well a whole class by imitating myself. It so happened that just as the lads were about being dismissed after the morning lessons, I was called away for a moment or two to attend to a visitor. But this was time enough for Johnny to go through a little performance; for on my suddenly returning by another entrance, there was the little imp with my silk hat on his head, an eyeglass (one of his own) stuck above his cheek, and my walking-stick under his arm, whilst he was perambulating round the room with the exact gait peculiar to myself, and now and again pretending gingerly to remove bits of orange-peel out of his path by a whisk of the stick. As soon as he gathered, from the sudden cessation of laughter, that I had returned to the room, the young rascal instantly whipped my hat off his head, slipped the glass into his mouth, and demurely walked up to me saying, "Please, sir, I was a holding them for you while you came back." A year or two after Johnny Slinn left school there was a windfall in the family. Johnny's uncle on the mother's side returned from Australia a fairly wealthy man, and he generously transferred a part of his fortune to his sister and her husband. Young Slinn was placed in a city merchant's office. However, although he was thoroughly steady and attentive to business, he still entertained a strong desire to go upon the stage. He joined an amateur theatrical society, and soon became its choicest low comedian. Before he was eighteen he got an engagement in Scotland with a good touring company, and after two or three years' provincial work he succeeded in getting a footing on London boards. At the present moment, I can safely say, I know of no low-comedy actor of Slinn's age who is such a favorite with the London theatre-going public, and I venture to prophesy that he is destined to step into the very front rank of comedians. As regards means, he is quite independent of his profession, for, at his uncle's death, he came into a little fortune of seven thousand pounds. And now I transcribe Johnny Slinn's school effusion. Here and there I have modified the punctuation, but, apart from that, I give the essay exactly as I find it. "Bank Holiday. They call this happy day Bank holiday, becose the Banks shut up shop, so as people cant put their money in, but has to spend it. People begin talking about Bank holiday a long time afore it comes, but they dont begin to spree about much till the night afore. Bank holidays are the happiest days of all your life, becose you can do nearly what you like, and the perlice dont take no notice of you. You can go into fields, and make your horses and donkeys go quick, and shout all about as hard as you like, and larf at people, and dress up in all different colors with guys on your faces, and you can do everythink but steal and brake winders. Never steal or brake winders, for it is written in the Bible. There's only one thing as spoils Bank holiday, and that is not being fine and hot. When its wet, all the gentlemen get savage and fight one another, and pull their sweetarts and missises about. I'm very sorry for them all round, becose it is a shame for to see. But when its fine and hot, the gentlemen all larf and are kind, and the women dance about and drink beer like the gentlemen. Everybody's right, and boys don't get skittled round. "Last Bank holiday was a regular good one. The man called Mr. Binn as lives four doors from us has a little horse and barrow cart, becose he goes about selling green stuff. My father, who is a shoe mender, did all their childern's boots just for nothin at all the week afore, so Mr. Binn told my father that him and mother and baby and me could all go with him in his carriage to Box Hill on the Monday. My father said the green stuff man got the best of the bargin, becose he soled the childern's boots very thick, besides putting some new lastiks in the missis's. When the cart came round, besides Mr. and Mrs. Binn and the childern, there was that young man and his sweetart as both works at the blackin factery. They call him Currunts, I dont know why; just same as they call my father Tachinends. Mr. Binn is a big strong man with a ruff voice, so they daresnt call him anythink, but they call his pony Beens. Mr. Binn called out from the carrige Now, Tachinends, sharp's the word.' Then we all . walked out, and got in. We had to sit all very close together, and there wasnt room for one more. Mr. Binn then said Are you all right behind?' and Currunts answered Right you are, guvnor, no more for Box Hill this time!" and then Mr. Binn let the pony go its fastest over the stones. Currunts kept lifting his hat and yellin to different folks in the street as he knowd, but our baby begun crying as loud as it could becose of the bumping up and down. At last we got to parts of London where Currunts didn't know people; the roads got yellerer, and the houses werent so black and high. "It was such a nice ride after that. There was big trees on both sides of the road nearly all the way, and beautiful fields right away wherever you looked. The houses was just nowhere. But when we got nearly to Box Hill I never seed anythink like it. It seemed as if the road was sinking down in the middle of the fields, and the fields seemed as if they was a rising up to the clouds. You never seed anythink so pretty in all your life. Box Hill is the prettyest of all, and it was just at the bottom of it that Mr. Binn said 'Wo, Beens! All change for Box Hill,' and the pony stopped and we all got out. "After a bit we had our dinner sitting on the grass. Dinners taste nicer at Box Hill than they do at home. We just had as much as we liked to eat, and then there was plenty left for tea and supper. Baby never cried at all, but tumbled about on the grass, and looked at the white ducks and hens, and listened to the roundabout orgins. Father wanted to go to the top of the Hill, but Mr. Binn said Not me; its good enuff here;' so we didn't go. Currunts and his sweetart went walking away by theirselves, and he had his arm round her neck and she had hers round his cote tails. Lots of people kept coming all day till it was regular jolly. After tea the yung gentlemen and their sweetarts played at kissin in the ring. I never seed so many kisses in my life. "When it got late, my mother and Mrs. Binn and the childern got in the cart, and sat talking while the gentlemen went inside the house and drank beer. At last we all started home, and it felt so nice and queer riding in the dark. There was a beautiful big moon right before us, and I could see Mr. Binn's head keep bobbin in the middle of it while he was driving. Mother told me after that I went to sleep at a place called Leatherhead, and never woke up till we was home. Next morning I was so sorry it was over, you dont know." HENRY J. BARKER. From The Spectator. The novice is taught, and rightly taught, that the good apprentice succeeds, and comes in his special sphere to honor and credit. But we could name an eminent public character who owes his brilliant career entirely to crass neglect of his duty as a railway booking-clerk; and also an idle dunce at school, held predestined to the workhouse, who retired from business about the time his contemporaries were taking their degrees, on a fortune acquired through a timely developed genius for blending and tasting tea. We know of a young Austrian to whom vast wealth was bequeathed by an aged gentleman whom the lucky youngster met in a railway train returning from his only son's funeral, because the bereaved parent was touched by the close resemblance of the stranger's features to those of his departed boy. Similarly, we are acquainted with a person who distinctly traces his entry on a distinguished professional life to the selection one day of a certain thoroughfare in a large city, where several ways met. Above all, to mention the most critical of steps, the origin of very many marriages would disclose this woof of destiny crossing, modifying, and not seldom cancelling the operation of the warp of law generally controlling events. WHAT may be deemed a trivial incident? What is an occurrence of serious importance? Those who have observed life most closely will probably be the least able to furnish to these queries replies altogether satisfactory. The choice of a boy's school, a young man's start in a profession, marriage, serious injuries, illness, sudden wealth or poverty, would probably be included in the latter; whilst meeting an acquaintance in the street, forgetting to post a letter, accepting an invitation to a particular party, the expression of a random opinion, missing a railway train, are likely to be relegated to the former category. Yet an unbiassed analysis of the experiences of the majority of mankind would, in our opinion, show that what is variously termed by different orders of persons, "providence," "chance," or the chapter of accidents," acting extremely often through the agency of the slightest imaginable circumstances, plays a most important, not unfrequently an overwhelming part, in the drama of human affairs. The result of a fall from a horse depends much less on the speed of the horse, or the constitution and equestrian ability of the precipitated rider, than on the precise manner in which his body reaches the ground, and this, despite all theories as to learning how to fall, will probably never be twice exactly the same, however often the mischance may occur. To take another instance, the impression made by one personality on another, leaving out of reckoning the element of beauty, is well known to defy all forecast, because we kindle sympathy and excite distaste at points the most unexpected and unaccountable. Most of us have had occasion to test the working of this subtle attraction and repulsion when we have endeav ored to make one of our friends take kindly to the conversation and companionship of another intimate acquaintance. Yet upon the outcome of these perpetually recurring combinations depends the issue of a vast number of our undertakings. The arising of a certain idea at a given propitious moment is another most weighty factor in life. It may be replied that Newton's apple or Watt's tea-kettle only brought to a definite expression reflections which had long been working in the philosopher's brain; but there can be no question that many thoughts produc-inal, all of which are constantly developtive of momentous consequences flash on the mind suddenly by what can only be termed an inspiration. Then, again, as to a particular line of conduct and its results. To borrow an illustration from a different department of human activity, a happy literary fluke, where a careful printer would have spoiled all, gave Malherbe, and after him the world, one of the loveliest lines in all lyric verse. The poem in question was written on the lamented death of a friend's daughter named Roselle; but by a benignant blunder, the conventional Roselle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, became Rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin, owing to the compositor's oversight its nameless charm and unchallenged immortality. Countless other examples of the trivial proving the grave and pregnant facts of life will present themselves to us all as we pass in review the events of every day, such as the casual acquisition of information, the chance word interchanged with an unknown person in a drawing-room, the fortuitous observation of a footprint, the sudden awakening of conscience in the mind of a would-be crim ing consequences which outwit the wisdom of the wise, and contribute to hold over the future, however apparently certain, an impenetrable veil. Even more startling are often the effects of incidents to all seeming immaterial and trifling, when we forsake the by-paths of private life for the great highway of history. A striking case in point is dwelt on by Sir Francis Palgrave in his "History of Normandy and England," showing us the obscure and unheeded origin of our very existence as a nation. He well remarks that England owes its place in the world to Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror, seeing Arletta, daughter of a tanner of Falaise, washing her linen in a rivulet near that town. "Arletta's pretty feet twinkling in the brook made her the mother of William the Conqueror. But for the tanner of Falaise, her father, Harold would not have fallen at Hastings, no Anglo-Norman dy nasty would have arisen, no British empire." To no sphere of energy does this sudden, overmastering interference of the unforeseen apply more forcibly than to war. Blücher's arrival half an hour later on the field of Waterloo might not impossibly have changed the history of the world; and the cackling of some geese was once highly useful, examples of the manner in which the fate of armies and citadels, and with them the destiny of nations, tremble at certain moments in the balance, to be swayed hither and thither by agencies apparently slight, but drawing boundless significance from the accidents, if there be such a thing as accident, of time and place. only can we but rough-hew our ends, our most careful endeavors lead not unfrequently to a termination the very reverse from what might reasonably have been anticipated. We can call to mind the case of a lady who directed her solicitor to invest a large sum of money in shares of the City of Glasgow Bank some months prior to its collapse. Imagining that her instructions had been carried out, she heard the news of the closure of the bank's doors with unqualified dismay, as the claim of the creditors would have entailed her total ruin. The subsequent discovery of her agent's embezzlement revealed likewise the groundlessness of her apprehensions, her loss being limited to the amount entrusted to her dishonest representative. On the other hand, the unlucky recipient of a single City of Glasgow Bank share as a wedding present should for once have looked a gift horse in the mouth, and had no reason to congratulate himself on his father-in-law's liberality, involving as it did the loss of all he possessed. The procrastination of Maclan of Glencoe had dire results; but the well-known happy failure of a belated traveller to_catch the ill-starred Tay Bridge train in December, 1879, could hardly serve to point a moral in a lecture to young men on the advantages of punctuality, nor the authenticated fact of an intoxicated person falling unscathed two hundred feet from the Dean Bridge in Edinburgh, where a sober one would certainly have been killed, be felicitously quoted at a Blue-Ribbon Army meeting. An apparently indifferent custom may strike deep into the working of human society, as Lord Bacon points out in the matter of square and round tables: "A long table and a square table seem things of form, but are things of substance, for at a long table a few at the upper end, in effect, sway all the business, but in the other form there is more use of the coun sellors' opinion that sit lower." Again, it might moderate the vindictiveness of the most inveterate black-baller in London to remember how a candidate's enemy elected him by adding a black but twentieth ball to nineteen white ones, a score of members at least being required to vote. On the other hand, the great salient changes and events of life, from which mighty innovations are expected, not unfrequently leave no impression behind them; and though they may be in a sense important, have little or no influence on the character or future of the individual they befall. Striking occurrences, foreshadowing serious consequences, have often absolutely no sequel, so that it passes the sagacity of the shrewdest to predict whether a given acorn, so to speak, shall perish unnoticed, or develop into a majestic oak. This strand of caprice, these inexplicable, surprising results from commonplace facts, whilst they render life less logical and prevent the calmest lot from being mapped out entirely by Still, after observing in its myriad rule and compass, undeniably supply most shapes the apparently capricious interferof the romance and excitement falling to ence of good and evil fate in the lot of the share of mortals, and though the medal many, the igneous rocks, as it were, forchas its dark and distressing side, there ing their wayward passage through the can be no doubt that existence without an methodically ordered strata of life, most occasional impromptu in the shape of the impartial minds will be the more convinced sudden and unexpected, to relieve the that the former are the exceptions, the even tenor of plans calculated and pre-more impressed with the certain eventual arranged, would be scarce endurable. Not triumph of law, the more confident that, although "fortune brings in some boats | wings and breasts we need.' From The Pall Mall Gazette. THE SLAUGHTER OF OUR SONGSTERS, "If they "Our customers are headstrong in some ways," remarked one milliner sapiently, "but we can always manage to overrule their logic if we see they incline towards a bird." "That is not very complimentary to the fair sex," our representative ventured to remark. "How do you manage? object to the use of a home bird then the French market comes immediately to the rescue, and the purchase is satisfactorily effected." "Some ladies object only to large birds, because it looks so like slaughter to kill them,' and others only to small birds for exactly the same reason." Humming-birds" (of which one house in WHAT have the great millinery houses the City has just imported twelve cases of the West End- Alison, Asser, Brown, containing two thousand each) "are not Clack, Colman, Elkias, Francis, Gautier, tolerated by many because they do not Isabel, Louise, Ludlow and Cockburn, wear well, though such dear, pretty little Muriel, Pauline and Perrin-to say on things, and so tiny;' and they are patronthe subject of the wholesale slaughter of ized by many because they come from wild birds for purposes of feminine deco-abroad, do not sing, and strange to reration? It was one of our representatives late! —are such dear, pretty little things, who asked herself this question, and she and so tiny.'' proceeded immediately to provide the answer by means of a wareroom-to-wareroom visitation. Carefully advancing with note. book in hand she jotted down the freely expressed opinions of ten leading milliners, and as they were all of one mind (a single dissentient being excepted) she contented herself in the case of the remainder with drawing mental conclusions from the outside of their brightly displayed windows. The verdict pronounced so unanimously amounted to the following statements: 1. The plumage trade has steadily increased for the past five years, and last season it reached an unprecedented height. 2. As a rule the anti-bird-slaughter agitation is looked upon as a mere fashionable sentimentality by the modistes. 3. Sev. eral ladies in the "very upper classes" protest faintly against the appearance of a bird's head in their hats and bonnets, a few express objections to the use of wings and breasts; but the vast majority set aside any soft feelings they may have on the subject in deference to the imperious dictates of fashion. The individual observations of the deposing milliners, male and female, were in many instances significant enough to bear repetition. Said one: "The ladies themselves don't object; it is their husbands who will not stand heads in their hats(); they seldom notice the other parts." "I believe most of our customers think the bird remains alive and in good health when deprived of breast and wings - they make such fuss about the head, and the heads alone." "Even when a lady remonstrates, she can easily be won over by the assurance that the hat or bonnet would not be half so becoming deprived of its feathered ornament, or by the assertion: We use none but poulterers' birds in this house - wild ducks, larks, pigeons; these, when dyed, supply all the 66 Well, our birds either come from abroad or they don't; they are either killed for food or destroyed as nuisances; their feathers are either bright naturally or dyed, and they are all sizes and all prices. If on no condition will a real bird be purchased, why then we have manufac tured birds, the feathers of which, ladies never seem to think, must be supplied by genuine birds the grebe, for instance. In fact, the whole agitation is humbug. Why not agitate against the use of furs? Why not raise the cry, 'Save the seal!' Save the sable!' and all the other young fur-yielding animals? They, too, are killed unnecessarily; for clothes equally warm can be readily manufactured. Fashion demands victims, and fashion will find victims until the crack of doom. Ospreys, which we get from the fish-hawk at ten guineas an ounce, will always be in demand for the court head-dresses of our fashionable aristocrats; aigrettes, too, supplied at a cheaper rate by the beautiful white heron. I acknowledge freely that there is something positively revolting in killing our own song birds, and I never allow one into my shop. But I see them disguised in the colors of the rainbow everywhere, and you can buy them anywhere as foreign productions - Java sparrows, if you like. Go have a talk with the feather dressers and mounters up in Whitechapel, nine-tenths of them Germans or Jews, or both, and you will find that among the thousands of skins they are turning out there is a large proportion provided by our own warblers that have |