value is appraised, and the sum divided equally among the members of the brotherhood. Of course there are things which the ragman is allowed to keep for his own private use; of such are cabbage stumps, carrot shavings, and other vegetable refuse, of which, one is sorry to say, he makes soup; but, taking account of these deductions, the average earnings of a chiffonnier still range from 2f. 50c. to 3f. a day. This seems a large sum for casual gleanings off waifs; but Parisians, living in flats, and being always at a loss for room, throw out into the streets a multitude of things which if space were less confined might be stored up for years as lumber. This is especially the case in the middle-class quarters. In the wealthy districts the servants take charge of all rejected odds and ends, and sell them for their own profit; besides, there is a dust-bin in rich houses, and the emptying of this dust-bin lies out of the province of the chiffonnier, being the dust contractor's business. Again, in the very poor streets the tenants throw nothing out but ashes, and even these are sifted so fine that not a cinder can be got out of them: it is a godsend when, probing with his crook to the lowest depths of a pauper's heap, the ragman manages to extract from it something salable that has been, thrown away by mistake. In the middle-class houses, however, there is no dust-bin, and the occupants are often ignorant of the value of waifs; or, knowing it, cannot be troubled, or think it infra dig. to turn their knowledge to account; and it is in front of these houses that the chiffonnier finds the whole pound-weight of lead or tin at a time, brass casters, rabbit-skins, the plucking of a whole goose, broken umbrellas, dead parrots with all their feathers, and articles of clothing with months, nay, years, of possible wear still left in them. The chiffonnier has three streets in Paris which he prefers to all others for his residence, the Rues Mouffetard, Filles-Dieu, and Sainte Marguerite; three hideous streets which might pass for relics of the mediæval Cour des Miracles of cut-purse memory. But the ragman feels at home here; he is with other ragmen; has his special cafés and eating-houses, knows his neighbors and is known of them, and can be tipsy or sober, as he pleases, without fear of scandalizing the quarter. It is not often that the ragmen come to arguments or blows among themselves; but sometimes the chiffonnières do, and then the battles are apt to be exciting. A chiffonnière generally plies her crook by hereditary tenure. Her father was a ragman; she was brought up among the rag-folk; and she becomes a rag-girl, a rag-woman, and finally, if Heaven spare her, -a rag-hag, by the natural sequence of events. This accounts for the young and sometimes pretty chiffonnieres one may meet in the streets; also for the battles above mentioned, which have generally some too seductive chiffonnier for their cause. But let it be said, to the honor of the chiffonnieres, that their morals are habitually good. They contrast favorably and proverbially in this respect with some of their "betters" in Parisian womandom.

-

Now and then a chiffonnier will disappear from his beat. Whither? If you follow up the man, not by his name, which most often the Prefecture alone knows, but by his sobriquet of Bijou, Bibi, or whatever it may be, — you will generally learn one of two things: either that Bijou vanished "mysteriously and has not been heard of since," which, being translated, means that Bijou whilst out on his rounds must have found a trinket or a pocket-book which proved too much for his honesty, or Bijou is dead. The former of these contingencies is not of frequent occurrence; but there is more than one instance of it on record: and what becomes of the chiffonnier who has found a fortune is a question that must remain as puzzling to solve as that other query, What becomes of the things which Bijou picks up, puts in his basket, and sells? Usually, however, the disappearance of Bijou is the indication of his death. The profession is not one that induces longevity. Out at night in all weathers, perpetually stooping, inhaling noxious vapors as a matter of habit and necessity, the chiffonnier's average span of rag-picking does not exceed five years. After that he declines into asthma. On an afternoon one may occasionally see the commonest and basest of hearses threading its way up the long Rue de la

Roquette to the cemetery of Père la Chaise, followed by a shaggy crew of tattered mourners. This is Bijou or Bibi, being escorted to his last bed by his fellow-ragmen. French ragmen do not fail in these pious observances; and perhaps, as you stand and watch the curious procession filing by, the official at the cemetery gates will whisper to "Monsieur would be surprised if I were to tell him the real name and history of the man being buried there. They will put nothing more than an initial on his tomb; but, if the man had been told when young that this is how he would go to his grave, he would have laughed outright. Life has singular ups and downs."

you,

Falstaff is ever playing upon his swaggering Ancient's name, telling him he will double charge him with dignities, charge him with sack, or dismissing him with, "No more, Pistol: I would not have you go off here; discharge yourself of our company, Pistol." When Bardolph announces that Master Brook has sent the knight a morning draught, Sir John exclaims, "Call him in such Brooks are welcome to me, that overflow such liquor!" And after his misadventure at Datchet Mead he says, "Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was thrown into the ford!' So, examining his pressed men, the fat rogue tells Mouldy it is the more time he was used; Shadow, that he is likely to make a cold soldier, but will serve for summer; Wart, that he is a ragged wart; and finishes by crying, "Prick me Bullealf till he roar again!" But, like other jokers, honest Jack did not enjoy such humor when he was the butt; for it angered him to the heart when Prince Hal, setting a dish of apple-johns on the table, took off his hat, saying, "I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights!" When Jack Cade harangues his followers with "We, Jack Cade, so termed of our supposed father," Dick, the butcher, puts in the words, "Rather of stealing a cade of herrings;" and upon his leader's asserting his wife was a descendant of the Laceys, interpolates, "She was, indeed, a peddler's daughter, and sold many laces."

Sometimes our great dramatist plays upon a name in most sober sadness, making Northumberland receive the fatal news from Shrewsbury field with the inquiry,

"Said he, young Harry Percy's spur was cold?
Of Hotspur, cold-spur?

and the dying old soldier, John o' Gaunt, plays nicely with his name, to the wonderment of his unworthy nephew, as he gasps out,

"Old Gaunt, indeed; and Gaunt in being old;
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;
And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watch'd:
Watching breeds leanness; leanness is all gaunt.
The pleasure that some fathers feed upon
Is my strict fast, I mean my children's looks;
And therein fasting, has thou made me gaunt.
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones."

In his Sonnets, we find Shakspeare twisting his own name about to soften the heart of an obdurate fair one:

"Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will;
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus.

If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will,
And Will, thy soul knows, is admitted there.
Thus far you love, my love-suit, love, fulfil.
Will Will fulfil the treasure of thy love?
Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.

Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lov'st me- for my name is Will." Whether certain lines inscribed to Ann Hathaway were written by her famous husband, in his courting days, or not, they afford too excellent a specimen of the art of rhythmical punning on names to be passed over. In its way, the following stanza stands unsurpassed :—

"When Envy's breath and rancorous tooth
Do soil and bite fair worth and truth,

And merit to distress betray,

To soothe the heart Ann hath a way.

She hath a way to chase despair,

To heal all grief, to cure all care,

Turn foulest night to fairest day,

Thou know'st, good heart, Ann hath a way;
She hath a way,

Ann Hathaway,

To make grief bliss, Ann hath a way."

As modern burlesque writers hold themselves licensed to distort words out of all recognition in order to produce what they call a pun, so, when complimentary playing upon names was in vogue, literary flatterers allowed themselves strange liberties. Capgrave, the chronicler, did not hesitate at antedating the death of Henry V. to make it fall upon the feast of St. Felix, as most appropriate to a person who was felicitous in all things. Nicholls, the writer of a poem entitled "Virtue's Encomium," puzzled how to deal with Sir Robert Wroth's name, got over the difficulty in this ingenious fashion :

"Worth's chief is dead, since worthy he is gone,
Who of that name most worthy was alone.
Ye poor and hungry all, his grave go find,

That holds the body of so pure a mind.
There sit ye down and sigh for bounty dead;
Bounty, with that brave knight, to heaven is fled;
Where, since he came, Heaven, as it doth app ar,
Wanting a star to place by bounteous Clare,
In Wroth did set the o before the r,

And made it Worth, which since is made a star."

Love is a much better versifier than expectant gratitude. An admirer of a pretty girl named Rain thus gave expression to his feelings:

"Whilst shivering beaux at weather rail,
Of frost and snow, and wind and hail,
And heat and cold complain,

My steadier mind is always bent
On one sole object of content, —
I ever wish for Rain!
Hymen, thy votary's prayer attend,
His anxious hope and suit befriend,
Let him not ask in vain;
His thirsty soul, his parched estate,
His glowing breast commiserate,

In pity give him Rain!"

Equally happy are the lines on a young lady named Careless:

" Oh, how I could love thee, thou dear Careless thing!
(Oh, happy, thrice happy! I'd envy no king.)
Were you Careful for once to return me my love,
I'd care not how Careless to others you prove.
I then should be Careless how Careless you were;

And the more Careless you, still the less I should care."

When Mrs. Little earned the Queen's guineas, and a friend remarked, "Every little helps!" the reminder was doubtless consoling to the happy father, who otherwise might have thought three times a little rather too much of a good thing. Brougham perpetrated a fair joke in accounting for Campbell's absence from his accustomed place in court, by telling Judge Abbott the missing barrister was suffering from an attack of scarlet-fever, when he was really doing the honeymoon with his bride, née Scarlett. Still better was Bishop Philpott's defence of Lord Courtney's marriage with Miss Clack, upon a lady objecting to the bride's want of family: "Want of family? Why, the Courtneys may date from the Conquest, but the Clacks are as old as Eve." When a middle-aged coquette settled down in wedlock with a Mr. Wake, Miss Austen wrote:

Maria, good-humored and handsome and tall,
For a husband was at her last stake;

And having in vain danced at many a ball,
Is now happy to jump at a Wake."

Miss Holmes, the lady president of an American total abstinence society, gave her hand to a Mr. Andrew Horn, thereby provoking the marriage lines:

"Fair Julia lived a temperance maid,

And preached its beauties night and morn;
But still her wicked neighbors said,

"She broke the pledge, and took A. Horn."

When a Miss Snowdon became Mrs. White, a rhyming punster wrote of her as a lady, —

"Who always was Snowdon by night and by day,
Yet never turned white, did not even look gray;
But Hymen has touched her, and, wonderful sight,
Though no longer Snowdon, she always is White."

This is pretty fair, but not so smart as the lines commemorating the union of Mr. Job Wall and Miss Mary Best:

"Job, wanting a partner, thought he'd be blest,
If, of all womankind, he selected the Best;
For, said he, of all evils that compass the globe,
A bad wife would most try the patience of Job.

The Best, then, he chose, and made bone of his bone;
Though 'twas clear to his friends she'd be Best left alone;
For, though Best of her sex, she's the weakest of all,
If 'tis true that the weakest must go the Wall."

Matrimonial cases apart, your punster rarely has an opportunity of playing upon two names at the same time. In the student days of Campbell the poet, he had such a chance given him, and could not resist the temptation. In the Trongate, Glasgow, Drum, a spirit-dealer, and Fife, an apothecary, were next-door neighbors, the latter displaying over his window the inscription, "Ears pierced by A. Fife." One night, Campbell and a couple of chums fixed a long fir board from the window of one shop to that of the other, bearing in flaming capitals the Shakspearian line, "The spirit-stirring Drum, the ear-piercing Fife." A conjunction of names may be disagreeably suggestive: the proprietor of an Illinois newspaper felt obliged to decline an otherwise desirable partnership proposal, from the impossibility of arranging the names satisfactorily, since the title of the firm must read either Steel and Doolittle, or Doolittle and Steel; so he wrote: "We can't join: one party would soon be in the workhouse, and the other in the penitentiary." When Manners, Earl of Rutland, said to Sir Thomas More, "Honores mutant Mores," the chancellor retorted, "It stands better in English,- Honors change Manners." The same names were brought together rather cleverly, when Archbishop More was succeeded by Dr. Manners Sutton, in some lines complimentary to both dignitaries :

"What say you? The archbishop's dead?
A loss indeed. Oh, on his head,
May Heaven its blessings pour!
But if, with such a heart and mind,
In Manners we his equal find,

Why should we wish for More?"

Epitaph writers have so often punned, sadly or saucily, upon the dead, that the selection of a few examples is a = puzzling matter. An epitaph in Waltham Abbey informs us that Sir James Fullerton, sometime first gentleman of the bedchamber to King Charles I., "died Fuller of faith than of fears, Fuller of resolutions than of = pains, Fuller of honor than of days." The connubial virtues of Daniel Tears are recorded in the couplet:

Though strange, yet true, full seventy years,
Was his wife happy in her Tears."

Much more dubious in expression are the last lines of the inscription to the memory of Dean Cole of Lincoln:

"When the latter trump of Heaven shall blow,
Cole, now raked up in ashes, then shall glow."

Of jocular performances of this kind, two odd specimens will suffice:

"Here lies Thomas Huddlestone. Reader, don't smile,
But reflect, as this tombstone you view,
That Death, who killed him, in a very short while
Will huddle a stone upon you!"

And this upon an organist:

"Here lies one, blown out of breath,

Who lived a merry life, and died a Merideth."

Vicar Chest turned the bones of Martin, the regicide, out of the chancel of Chepstow Church; an act the vicar's sonin-law resented by inditing the following epitaph for him when he required one :—

"Here lies at rest, I do protest,

One Chest within another;
The chest of wood was very good
Who says so of the other?

Gen. Worsley, the officer to whose charge "that bauble' was given by Cromwell, was buried in Henry the Seventh's Chapel with great ceremony. The next morning the stone above his grave bore the words, "Where never Worse Lay,"-words written upon it by the dead man's own brother-in-law, Roger Kenyon, member for Clitheroe, who had returned to the abbey after the funeral party (of which he was one) departed, that he might vent his hatred of the Protector by abusing his favorite officer. Party feeling is apt to find savage expression, even in our own times; when Gov. Grey and the colonists of the Cape took different views on the convict question, the following lines appeared :—

"Mankind have long disputed at the Cape,
About the Devil's color and his shape.
The Hottentots declared that he was white;
The Dutchman swore that he was black as night.
But now all sink their difference, and say,
They feel quite certain that the Devil's-Grey."

A comical instance of a man playing upon his own name sprang out of absent-mindedness. Sir Thomas Strange, calling at a friend's house, was desired to leave his name. "Why," said he, "to tell the truth, I have forgotten it!" "That's strange, sir," exclaimed the servant. "So it is, my man: you've hit it," replied the judge, as he walked away, leaving the servant as ignorant as before.

Swift's friend, Dr. Ash, would have relished Strange's joke infinitely. Soon after the passing of an act for the protection of growing timber, the doctor, turning into an inn for shelter, asked the waiter to help him off with his coat: the man refused on the plea that it was felony to strip an Ash, an answer so much to the doctor's taste, that he declared he would have given fifty pounds to have made the pun himself.

A gentleman who had never been known to make a pun in his life achieved one under very peculiar circumstances. Capt. Creed and Maj. Pack were fighting a double duel with Mr. Mathews and Mr. Macnamara. The first-named falling before his opponent's sword, Pack exclaimed, "What! have you gone, poor Creed?" "Yes," cried Mathews

"and you shall quickly Pack after him," and with the words he brought the major to the ground by a thrust through the body.

In justice to our readers, we must not trifle longer with their patience; but we cannot resist quoting the lines with which a poetess added grace to her contribution to the fund raised for the widow of Hood:

"To cheer the widow's heart in her distress,
To make provision for the fatherless,
Is but a Christian's duty; and none should
Resist the heart-appeal of Widow -- Hood!"

a quatrain worthy of the great poet-punster himself.

THE GRAVE OF EVE.

"No getting to Mecca, then?" said I despondingly.

"O' course not," answered the captain, with an air of fatherly contempt. "You must be precious weak (if you'll hexcuse o' my sayin so) ever to ha' thought on't at all. If I'd known as that was your little game, I could ha' told you long ago as how as 'twas impossible."

We were standing, together with our Arab pilot, on a "crow's-nest "* at the foremast-head, straining our eyes toward the spot where, far away on the eastern horizon, a long line of brilliant white marked the whereabouts of the coral reefs which fence the harbor of Djeddah, the port which is to Mecca what Yambo is to Medina, or Jaffa to Jerusalem.

66

Master," strikes in the pilot, showing all his magnificent teeth in a broad, derisive grin," suppose you try go Mecca, you no come back again. Look see! tree month ago, come here one Austriacoman-clever man veree good, Arab make talk; he put on clothes like Arabs man, and go dere. Well, what den? De four day he dere, Arabs men spy out dat he Christian, and den". -a quick, slanting stroke of his right hand sufficiently completed the sentence.

"Um!" said I; "that's rather a sell too. But what can one see here, then? for it won't do to get within forty miles of the Prophet's tomb and see nothing after all."

"Hark you, master," answers Ibrahim, "you say tomb dat is just it! Outside de town here you go see de tomb of Eve, she dat was wife to Adam, you know veree fine place-all Inglis howadjis go dere. Suppose you make pay ten piastre, I go show you all ting."

"What d'ye think of that, captain? I vote we take Father Abraham's advice."

"See about that when we get ashore," answers the practical skipper: "there's lots to be done afore then. Starboard, my lad there; starboard!"

"Starboard it is!"

For the next hour Ibrahim and the captain have to do all they know in keeping clear of the reefs, which show their long white fangs on every side through the green shallow water; while, moment by moment, the glittering line ahead of us defines itself more and more clearly, and behind it begins to appear a broad band of gray, broken midway_by what seems at first sight a great heap of white rocks. But as we approach, the formless mass shapes itself into flatroofed houses, and loop-holed walls, and rounded domes, and tapering minarets, and all the barbaric picturesqueness of an Eastern town. The harbor is crowded with vessels under every flag, from the Yankee stars and stripes to the white elephant of Siam; and the broad quays are heaped with bales, chests, and barrels, among which the swarming Arabs who are loading and unloading look like an army of

ants.

"Trifle better than Koomfidah, ain't it?" says the skipper approvingly.

We glide into the harbor, and anchor between two of the outermost vessels, having slipped dexterously through the gnashing jaws of the encircling reefs. That done, we lower our boat, and zigzag for nearly an hour amid a net

*The "crow's-nest" is simply a plank slung upon two ropes, like an ordinary swing.

;

work of shoals, banks, and coral patches. At length (not without several collisions and a good deal of Homeric dialogue) we land in front of the custom-house, and are met by the resident shipping-agent, a dapper little Austrian Jew, who, as soon as the necessary formalities are gone through, hospitably insists upon dragging us off to "tiffin" at his town-house; adding, as a further inducement, that he will himself furnish us with a guide to all the "Merkwurdigkeiten," the famous tomb of Eve included.

There is no need to ask in what country we are landing. Had we been let fall from the clouds, like Gulliver or Bedreddin Hassan, the files of camels that go by with their long, noiseless stride; the lean, dark, sinewy figures in cotton waistcloths that throng the gateway; the quivering haze of intense heat which hovers along the horizon, and the wide, desolate, cruel waste of sand that lies below, would all announce Arabia, in language that no one can mistake. We are upon enchanted ground, and with every step into the city the impression waxes stronger and stronger. The low, massive rampart, standing up white and bare in the blistering sunshine; the tall, dungeon-like, narrow-eyed houses, looking stealthily down at us like lurking assassins; the dark, narrow streets, from the depth of which we can just see the sky far above us, like a little ribbon of burning light, are all genuinely Oriental. And as we turn a corner, and plunge into the labyrinth of the many-gated bazar, filled with a rich summer gloom of shaded sunlight, and echoing like a menagerie with the howls of conflict between buyers and sellers, the illusion is complete.

All the shadowy people whom we dreamed of by the nursery fire, years ago, surround us here as living and breathing realities. There are the portly merchant in his flowing robes, and the gaunt, savage-looking beggar, and the bare-legged porter, waddling beneath his high-piled load; the veiled woman in her long blue mantle, with her little brown "piccaninny" hanging at her back like a wallet; the brawny water-carrier, stripped to the waist, with his black, greasy skin of water poised on his broad shoulders; and the copper-skinned dervish in his coarse camel'shair cloak, who stalks past us, rolling his eyes and whirling his clenched fists, like a pugilistic saint of the desert. Here sits Aladdin at the door of his father's shop, as he may have sat on the memorable evening when the African magician invited him to that expedition of which we all know the result. There trudges Ali Baba behind his laden donkey, with a shade of uneasiness upon his weather-beaten face, as if doubting whether he may not have forgotten the cabalistic "open sesame," or wondering whether that brute Cassim will ferret out the secret of his newly-acquired wealth. This richly-dressed lady in yellow slippers, veiled so closely as to leave nothing visible except her brilliant eyes, must be the "incomparable Princess Badroulbadour" on her way to the bath, happily unconscious of the prying gaze furtively directed at her by the audacious owner of the Wonderful Lamp. And yonder, in their usual disguise of Moussul merchants, go "the good Haroun Alraschid" and his vizier Giafar.

But after a time our enjoyment of this splendid diorama begins to be somewhat marred by the obtrusive attentions of the "stinging flies," and the determined hostility of the dogs; for in this stronghold of Islamism even the dogs are as good Mohammedans as their masters, and fly at every Giaour with a heartiness of religious feeling which would entitle them to a high place in the Church of England. What with these annoyances, and what with the heat and dust, we are not altogether sorry when our host, having piloted us through all the intricacies of the town, turns suddenly out of the blinding glare into a cool, shady court, as thoroughly sheltered from the sun as four stories of good masonry can do it. The walls are hung with maps, charts, sailing advertisements, and all the paraphernalia of a shipping office; while in the centre appear a sofa, several chairs, and a writing-table, beside which stand expectant two white-bearded elders (the most venerable-looking patriarchs and most unconscionable rogues in the town), who have come hither in the fruitless hope of cheating our host out of a few piastres. As the usual skirmishing begins (necessa

rily sharp between Jew and Arab) the skipper and I sea ourselves on the sofa, throw off our coats, and “take i easy" till the trial of fence is over.

"Now, gentlemen," cries M. R- at length, jumping up as the two "grave and reverend seigniors" shuffle out of the court, "that's done at last, thank Heaven; so come along to tiffin."

I will not tantalize my reader with the recital of the countless native dainties which formed our afternoon meal. spread in a large, lofty upper room with painted walls, from the deep lancet-like windows of which we have a noble view of the harbor. Suffice it to say, that our repast is as agreeable as good taste and frank hospitality can make it. Our honest skipper, it is true, is at first just a little shy about entering Madame R- -'s presence in his "sea-going rig;' and indeed, both he and I, fresh from roughing it down in Yemen, with our garments tattered and travel-stained, our faces burned to the color of chestnuts, and our beards five inches long, are rather strange-looking ornaments for any lady's drawing-room; but the cordiality of our charming hostess speedily removes all embarrassment. The tabletalk would be a treat for Prof. Max Muller, carried on as it is in six languages at once, English, French, German, Italian, Turkish, and Arabic; but we are very merry, nevertheless, for Europeans always amalgamate readily amid an alien population, and, at a distance of four thousand miles from home, even an Englishman can afford to be tol erably affable without wholly losing his self-respect.

And oh, what a treat it is to be for once fairly out of the beaten track of modern travel! No "new and interesting routes," no "monster excursions," no photographs, no Bradshaws, no "antics" (as our skipper styles the relics of the past), not a trace, in fact, of that noble army of martyrs who yearly take their six weeks of discomfort on the Continent, and carry out the prescription of "complete change of scene" by taking England with them wherever they go. I am just beginning to wonder whether old Jean Jacques was not right, after all, in his theory of "man's normal condition of happy barbarism," when my reflections are suddenly cut short by the stentorian voice of the captain.

"Mr. K―, if you're a-goin' to look at that 'ere tomb o' Mother Eve's we'd best be stirrin'; and here's a darkey all ready to pilot us.”

The "darkey" in question—a tall, gaunt, cunning-looking Arab-appears at the door; and, taking leave of our entertainers, we march off toward the eastern gate. After about ten minutes' silence, the skipper, who had evidently got something on his mind, suddenly breaks forth:

"I say, how did Eve come for to run into this port? The Garden of Eden warn't in these parts, was it? Seems to me she must ha' got a goodish bit out o' her course."

the

"So did all the rest of the family, to judge by appear ances," answered I. "I have seen the tomb of Cain at Damascus; I've seen the tomb of Adam at Jerusalem; and now here's the tomb of Eve near Mecca,- rather a divided household, upon my word! If we could only light upon tomb of Abel, now, that would just make up the lot." "Master," strikes in our guide, you not know why Adam and Eve no togedder? Why, 'cause dey husband and wife; de furder husband and wife apart de better!"

In the midst of an uproarious laugh from the skipper over this genuinely Asiatic solution, we pass through the gate way, and find ourselves on the verge of a vast sandy plain, along the horizon of which looms a shadowy range of low hills, wave after wave. Immediately in front of us, with their long necks outstretched upon the earth in lazy enjoy ment, lie thirty or forty camels, awaiting the departure of a caravan for Mecca; while a few hundred yards to the left, within a low white wall, appears a little stone chapel (the headstone of Eve's sepulchre), whither our guide bends his steps, giving us en route a few necessary instructions.

"Here come much plenty beggars, ask for bucksheesh;' you give two, tree piastre, dat 'nuff. Den come moollab, he show you all tomb; he say put down money here, put down money dere; you give him one medjidieh, dat 'nuff; big rogue!"

for all dem moollah

*

*The Turkish dollar, worth nearly four shillings,

And the worthy Palinurus, himself one of the most accomplished rogues in the province, lifts his head with an air of conscious honesty, which is as good as a play to behold.

His prediction is speedily verified; for as we reach the boundary-wall of the tomb the beggars pounce upon us en masse, a swarm of lean, naked, filthy monsters, reeking with dirt and vermin, deformed by ophthalmia, and rotting piecemeal with disease the reductio ad absurdum of the Oriental race, which at its worst is very bad indeed. Following these comes the moollah, a villanous-looking old rascal, whose brown, shrivelled figure, swathed in its white burnouse, looks (as the skipper remarks with a grin) "just like a cigar wrapped in paper." This worthy, with a laudable anxiety to secure all the booty to himself, vigorously drives away the minor marauders, and, leading us up to the little chapel above-mentioned, says solemnly in Arabic, "There is the head!"

"He mean de head of Eve- dere it lie!" explains Pali

Durus.

"And dere he lie too," whispered I to the captain, who grins assentingly.

The moollah hints that it is customary to deposit an offering here; but we, mindful of our instruction, reserve the right of payment, and pass on, an omission at which the reverend gentleman looks considerably chapfallen. From this point we have a view of the entire structure, which consists merely of two parallel lines of low white wall, about six feet apart, with a stone chapel at either end, and one in the middle, - -the whole affair looking very like the model of a railroad with disproportionately large stations. The total length of the tomb, as I measured it by paces, is three hundred and sixty feet. Truly, there were giants in those days!

Arrived at the second chapel, the moollah unlocks a door, revealing a kind of bureau, curiously carved and embossed, which, being opened, discloses a small silver casket. "See,' he says impressively, "there is the heart!" I lay my medjidieh on the casket, in obedience to a cabalistic sign from Palinurus; and the captain, remarking sotto voce that "it's a precious small heart for a young 'ooman o' that height," follows my example. Thence we proceed to the third chapel, where the show ends, and a furious dispute begins between Palinurus and the moollah as to the propriety of further payment. The skipper and I at length settle the matter by walking off; whereupon his reverence, seeing that his share in the spoil is at an end, lets loose the expectant swarm of beggars, who follow us with howls and entreaties almost to the gate of the town.

At the gate, however, we halt, as if by mutual agreement, to take one last look at the surrounding panorama. The sun is setting, and the stillness of a great calm lies upon earth and sea and sky. Far away to the left, the smooth expanse of the harbor, with its glittering fringe of coral reefs, reflects the glory of the sunset; behind, the white ramparts and tall minarets of the town rise against the crimson sky; while in front, breaking with its windings the endless monotony of the surrounding desert, the caravan road melts away in curve after curve to the purple hills, beyond which lies the spot whither a hundred millions of men daily turn their faces in prayer, the holy city of Mecca.

add thereto "Neremiah Bottletop." The only apology they have been able to offer me in later years is, that this preposterous name originated in the person of my godfather, an eccentric old bachelor of good fortune. But even to be called Neremiah Bottletop, with the pleasant consciousness that thereby I had earned a place in my godfather's affections and will, was denied me. We lived in the Eastern Riding of Yorkshire, and Mr. Bottletop near the town of Chester; and I arrived at the mature age of twenty-five without having had the pleasure of even making his acquaintance.

In my childish days at home the misfortune of my name had never told severely on my youthful spirits: among my sisters and brother I went by the undignified but obvious abbreviation of "Nerry; " and not until I went to school, at the age of nine, did it really dawn upon me that my name was a terrible thing. I will engage that no merely human boy at school and college ever possessed such a collection of objectionable nicknames as were founded upon my unlucky cognomen. I believe the name Neremiah is not a Scriptural one, at least, I have never met with my namesake in the Bible; but, heedless of this, I was called Obadiah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Lamentation, Job, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the prophet, the seer, the patriarch; Moses, Mo, Gog and Magog; Boggy, Bottle, Jugs, Pots, Tops; the King of Bashan, Sihon the Amorite, the Moabite, the Hivite, the Hittite, and all the rest of the nations against which the children of Israel carried on war, — in fact, a longer string than I can now remember; but I know that I hardly ever meet an old school friend who does not address me by some title coined at my expense from his own exuberant fancy.

Still, as I fortunately possessed a tolerably good temper and the light heart of my age, these small annoyances became harmless through their frequency, and I went through life with youth's careless serenity until I fell in love.

My father was a man of pretty good fortune, and M. P. for our little town of Newborough; but, as I possess an elder brother and eight sisters, I was very reasonably expected to earn some bread of my own. But, most unfortunately, I had no talents and less ambition, and felt an unaccountable dislike to every course of life which was pointed out to me. The position I should have preferred, and probably adorned, was that of a country squire, with a big house and garden and half a dozen hunters; but these good things are seldom attained-except by accident — when a man is at an age to appreciate their blessings. I had put off my decision until I was too old for the army or navy; I had an unmistakable distaste to the learned professions; I had no turn for art, literature, or science; and I was not clever or business-like enough for a mercantile career. It was at this unsettled period of my life that I took upon me to fall in love.

The name of my enslaver was Miss Geraldine Montague; and if any thing was calculated to strike terror into the boldest heart, it was the question which haunted me, — not, Does she love me? Will she be mine? or even, How shall I support her if she will? but,- How can I ask her to change that name for Mrs. Neremiah Bottletop Ogg?

A horror came over me for my name, upon which I now look back as a man recovered from illness thinks over his ravings. I could not avoid the dreadful necessity of knowing that she thought of me (when she did) by the name of Mr. Ogg, as I had been introduced to her before my mind gave way, or I feel convinced I should have added a syllable or two to my surname, and perhaps brought it out Ogglethorpe or Ogilvy, as I subsequently committed absurdities quite as great.

I met Miss Montague and her mother at a friend's house in London, my own relations being safely at home in the wilds of Yorkshire, except my brother, who was with his regiment in India. After three days' acquaintance, I had seen a great deal of the Montagues, having systematically dogged their footsteps in a manner only possible in a big city. I caught at faint clews as to where they would spend the afternoon or pass the evening, and invariably contrived