again. the prow, and the vast level plain to the ocean's | to wait till the night-tide should float them off edge gives place to the object for which one came; and Captain Jesse at last went below for forty winks, with the sun at the top of his eternal round, in order that he might come up all fresh for afternoon work, for it would be an odd day in his experience if before nightfall there should be no work to do. Captain Jesse came up all right and bright at the close of his forty winks; and the boy and man took their turn below in a series of snoozes undisturbed by any necessity of looking out for a job, since Captain Jesse paid them by the day. So one delightful dream melted into another, and down in the hot little stifling black-hole of a cabin this hour broke upon the next, and all vanished together like foam, till with a long, dull scratch resounding beneath them, and then a shock of suddenly-ceased motion, the sleepers woke, rubbed their stupid eyes in bewilderment, gathered their scattered wits, rushed up the narrow companion-way to the deck, and found the boat-after floating about at its own sweet will and drifting in on the tide-now lay with shallow water every where about it, ashore, and firmly wedged in a sand-bar; and as for Captain Jesse Amazeen he was nowhere to be seen. The redoubtable individuals looked about them then in perplexity, in amazement, in consternation, in terror. They had left Captain Jesse on deck-it was a physical impossibility that he could be any where else. Perhaps now he was behind the mainsail: no? Under the seat? No? Then he must have gotten out in the shoal water to push the boat off. No! Why, where in time was he? Had he gone below to hide and frighten them? But then Captain Jesse was not a man that played tricks. Could he have fallen asleep again and so have fallen overboard? Was there any earthly or unearthly reason for him to have made away with himself to have committed suicide? Unable to believe their senses they hallood and shouted and danced about like madmen. Notwithstanding all this rather late exertion on their part Captain Jesse Amazeen was nowhere to be seen-neither did his ghost answer any such invocation. His boots, it is true, stood large as life, just as he had taken them off in the morning after reaching open water; but as for himself he had put on in their stead the shoes of silence, the cap of invisibility, and had left for parts unknown; nor was it even to be conjectured where he was. The heat of the day had been sweltering, there was not a whisper of wind, the sails hung in large loose wrinkles, the sun had declined from noon, and the west was already burnished with golden afternoon light. It was after four o'clock. How long had Captain Jesse been away, and whither was he gone? The two wore their lungs sore with cries and calls, in hopes some one from the shore might catch the sound and come to their help and Captain Amazeen's-there was nothing else for them to do except to tear their hair; and at last they sat down in desperation But while this worthy pair had been taking it so easily below deck Captain Jesse had been in far less enjoyable plight. Left alone at the helm of the pilot-boat, and the sun beating ardently down upon him, he had thrown off jacket and waistcoat, and with the least possible accoutrement, endured the hot assault of the day and awaited his fortunes. There was not a sail to be seen; his assistants were still in their bunks below-he let them sleep; and cast and trolled his blue-fish line, if haply any fighting fellow should come across the bait. None did-the solitude seemed infectious-desert above the waters, desert below. The sea began to darken and ripple in one place, the ripple crept his way, brushed along by a deceitful little waft of warm wind. "We'll leave these parts," said Captain Jesse; and he put his helm to larboard that he might go and trim the mainsail. He thought he put his helm to larboard-it was a little mistake he made-he had put it precisely the other way, he bent to loosen a rope, the boat came up in the wind, the sail slapped over, and the heavy boom brushed him like a feather from its course, and tossed him far out into the sea as lightly as a flake of foam. The When Captain Jesse came to the surface after his sudden plunge, rose, struck out, and shook the water from his eyes, the pilot-boat, her sails filled with the deceitful breeze only to be forsaken by it presently, had swept far forward on her way and was almost beyond hearing. He hailed her, hailed her again and again, but there was nobody to answer; in vain, putting forth all his powers as a swimmer, he tried to reach her, she fled before him; and the distance grew, stretching itself like a thread of infinity. little breeze fled with her, left the sea all calm and still behind, but darkly ruffled the way before and blew her on in its sport. He had endeavored, with the energy of despair, to keep in her wake, that even if he might not overreach her he might be observed by the sluggards should they ever come on deck; but now, at last, he saw that it was of no use for him to expend the remnant of his strength in idle efforts to compete with the winged thing; he must be content to float about till he could be picked up, must be content perhaps to drown. He lifted himself up, treading water, and searched the whole horizon-it was empty as a last year's nest—and he lay back with his hands clasped behind him, his mouth just higher than the surface, and the whole ocean seething in his ears. By times, as he lay there and the laggard instants crawled by on the ripple of the tide, the fatigue, the suspense, the fear grew insupportable; he trod water and looked around him again with an eye that scrutinized each distant crest and foambell, or else summoned his forces and his will to the rescue and swam wildly and vaguely about he knew not whither. His brain was becoming so bewildered that he could not direct himself, and in which direction to make that he might soonest reach some shore he found himself un- | cried to the man still on board of the Heart's Deable to decide. But what a crazy dream! there light-the man whose voice he knew the people was no shore in sight. The sense then that he at the light-house could hear-“Why don't must wait for others, and could do nothing for you holler, Sir?" And, in response, "What himself, waxed into positive suffering. His limbs got languid too in the warm and pleasant water; the sun playing on his bare head made his brain light and giddy; a strange pulse was going like a little trip-hammer upon his temple, and bright and beautiful colors shot their woven beams before his burning eyes with every other breath. "This is it," thought Captain Jesse. "Drowning is only slow apoplexy, the doctor said. I am drowning." A few seconds afterward he wondered why he did not recall his sins, as he had heard that people in his condition were apt to do, and then he began to remember with a vengeance. shall I holler, Captain Amazeen ?" the terrified 66 He had always been a somewhat eccentric man; though perhaps a profanity, only to be equaled by an expert, could hardly be called eccentricity. Volleys of terrible oaths that had been safety-valves to more terrible tempers rattled about his memory on the instant; now he remembered the oaths but he forgot the anger fits that caused them. The ghost that had visited him last year rose again like a white apparition here, vivid in the sunlight. "Captain Jesse Amazeen," the midnight ghost had said, "arise and come with me. Prepare to meet your end." And Captain Jesse Amazeen had cried: "Who the are you, Sir? What are you in my chamber for? Go about your business, Sir!" Then he had thought it some of his comrades playing off their jokes upon him; he had never asked them nor spoken of it to them. But now-perhaps it was a ghost-who knew? Perhaps it warned him of this day; and he was not prepared. Then, in defiance of ghosts, and ends, and fate itself, he gave a score of stout strokes, leaped up and swept the sea again with his piercing glance, hailed some chance ear, and set his teeth and fell back to float once more, determined not to drown. He remembered that he had been in worse straits than this before to-day. One black night, the sea running sluices, he had gone off to bring a-if the truth must be told though-rather pleas schooner into port, and his boat had swamped beneath her bows, the mast had broken and the sail had taken him over and under, wrapped about and about with its folds like a mummy, and the waves had sucked him into their huge, hungry hollows, a powerless atom. God knows how he got out again-he never did. Nor that only. The day when, after heavy drinking, he got the Heart's Delight among the breakers-hav-it for a buoy, unless the fancy struck them that ing only one man on board-it was a pity if he it was a seal, and they fired a shot at it; but had forgotten that. He had gone himself in no matter for that, they never hit a mark yet. the yawl to cast the kedge anchors and so work Meantime, contemptuously defying suppositiher off, and a big wave, seeking what it might tious bullets, he was preciously near to drowning. devour, had suddenly snatched his oars and capsized him; and having just missed a watery death himself, he had clambered upon the bottom of his upturned boat, which the retreating tide and undertow were drawing out to sea amain. Making a trumpet of his hands he had antly than otherwise; he liked the grit of them, he would have said; he had rather drown now than be picked up by Captain Coffin, or any of that old Jackson and Jefferson tribe. It became him to be cautious who saw his head bobbing round there in the water; there was one comfort, the Coffins and Cluneys were a stupid set; and, if they saw it, ten to one they would take As he lay there in the placid, softly singing sea, there came a fine sweet sound of distant bells. Afternoon bells ringing at once from the belfries of all the schools in the great town, or else gay wedding bells, or maybe alarms of fire. The mingled tones stole out to him like half bor who stood outside, and leaned both elbows on the sill within, and flattered the white floor and shining shelves, while the waking baby crowed for the sunbeams glinting and glancing there in the bright wave-drowning while Nick, asking to go out, was down sailing boats in the pond hard by the school-house, and Carrot-top was sound asleep, with her little head fallen on the desk among her books-drowning while the sun shone, while those he loved were quiet and unconscious, laughing, forgetful, gay! And lost chimes, with a wild music in their cadences; | Drowning while his wife chatted with the neighhe began to fashion them into tunes, the tune perhaps his wife was singing with one foot upon the cradle at this moment. He saw the children trooping into school by the music, his own pretty Carrot-top among them, swinging her Shaker and dancing on while the sun beat out every thread of her yellow hair to gold, and little Nick lagging along and throwing handfuls of the street-dust over the urchin lagging with him—a trick for which the imp had had many a good shaking: he only wished it were in his power to give him a good shaking now! Then the bell-drowning all alone out there in open sea with notes came slower, and slower, and yet more only half his life lived out, with health and slowly; they were tolling-tolling for him-or strength in hand-hope and defiance together was he fainting? Perhaps so-it might have battled despair and an ocean-unevenhanded been-had not just then some indistinguishable contest; he, a mere mote, fighting an element: object shot swiftly by him in the dark slippery it was a contest only to abandon. Captain Jesse depth, some fish or monster of the deep-and was a brave man naturally; he had looked on with that came the thought of sharks. This great danger and never quailed, but that was was the weather; these were the waters-Good because expectation and will were then his alHeaven! Coffin, or Cluney, or any body-lies. Now, tossed about in the tide, his mind had help! No man-eaters about these shores? Why, he knew better! He had seen them to his cost. And young Ben Eaton had to the cost of his life itself. What course would there be for him to take?—the exertions that terrified and drove off the nibbling shoals might be the very thing | to attract the large and more cunning cruel creature. There was indeed but one way to face him-just so long as he looked at a shark, as he turned and turned and kept him eye to eye, just so long the cowardly wretch would delay attack; | behooved him to be wary then, to keep his senses in condition, to be ready to fight his foe should he come to hand! He sprung forward in the water with new energy, and again and again searched the sea with swift, eager glances. It was all as empty as the sky itself-empty of every thing save color and light-an, azure and pitiless hollow, out of which lanced golden arrows at the hollow as vast and as pitiless below; for the great sea lifted its jeweled walls like the rim of a cup, and all its smooth and level splendor slanted up from where he lay, an idle speck at the centre and bottom of the cup. He Gradually now the element, which had been so soothing and delightful to the frame, felt chilly and chillier to poor Captain Jesse. feebly wondered if its temperature had changed, and then thought of complaining to some one that his feet were cold; afterward he remembered himself, with an effort, and began to swim afresh. A wave came running over another and dashed in his face, a second followed it, a third lifted him and rocked him to and fro; there were fine and tiny caps of foam every where ribbing the expanse; the tide was falling, and a gentle wind had begun to blow on, just enough to roughen the water and make a ridge and trough, in which a stout, fresh swimmer would have had ado to keep his headway. His mouth and throat kept filling with the brine; the salt sea spume broke remorselessly over him; it was of no use to swim; fold his hands behind his back-there was nothing now but drowning. weakened as his energies exhausted; and cold "A gentler stream with gladness still The royal seat of God most high: He looked idly up, and a shining thing hung A film faded away from Captain Amazeen's vision, as a mist strips slowly off from a morn "Pretty fellows you be!" cried Captain Jesse. "God bless you, Captain Amazeen! Then you're alive!" they answered in one breath. ing meadow; he was plunging and rocking with | to be an apparition as that they doubted if they a very different motion from that afforded to were not ghosts themselves. one cradled in angels' arms; something was trickling down his throat, something familiargood old smoky Scotch whisky by the taste. If that were a seraph squeezing his cold fingers between a pair of hard, warm palms, it was in the guise of an Oldenport fishwife. These must be solid planks under him, not downy clouds. And Captain Coffin himself, and no other, was rubbing him up and down with woolen gloves in a way that might strike sparks. Captain Jesse beamed mildly on them all out of his opening eyes, gurgled a word or two in his throat, and placidly went to sleep. When the pilot-boat, having been floated off by the night tide, came up the river in the bright moonlight, in which you could see to read, the man and boy full of terror at the ordeal before them in which Captain Amazeen's fate must be broken to his family, the worthy couple in silence furled their sails and threw a cable to the first man among the group upon the wharf's end who could catch it. As the lucky one stepped out of the shadow into the clearer ray their teeth chattered in their heads, not so much that Captain Jesse, in his stout, ruddy flesh and blood, now quite himself again, seemed "Wa'al-jest jest alive!" replied the Captain, pulling the boat round with an arm like an iron lever, and making her fast to the wharf. "Tell ye what. You fellers don't sail in this craft no more. Me an' Cap'n Coffin's struck han's, an' we'll do all the piloting we want for these here waters ourselves." With which announcement the two Captains struck hands again, and shook the said hands so long that it seemed doubtful if they had not fairly grown together, and their owners were not endeavoring by these gyrations to get them apart. And indeed they had-they had grown togetherthose hands of theirs; for though Captain Jesso could not abandon the principles for which he had fought at the polls these twenty years, he made a greater sacrifice by far than that-he attained a pitch of magnanimity to which few men in his circumstances may ever dare aspire; he remembered who and what the man was, and for his great presumption and offense in saving his life he forgave Captain Coffin! Could any one do more? FORTY-TWO. SAD middle-age! from thy cold heights Mine eyes, anointed by the truth, Turn wistfully and seek the lights Not often thus the hunted soul Dare pause before the hounds of fate; But where the inevitable goal Is death, what harm to wait? Alas! alas! their search is vain. The lights have vanished with the hours; Those vales I shall not see again; Flown are the birds and dead the flowers. The joys that once so real seemed This disenchanting air has shown The most unreal dreams e'er dreamed; Friendship, and Hope, and Love, and Faith! I see your ghosts amid the gloom Still hovering o'er my dreary path Where rose your temple and your tomb. Hopes-only shadows, fancy born; Loves ever bearing bitter fruit; Again I gather up my load; I turn my back on what has been; I seek once more the onward road; I challenge boldly the Unseen. And seeming filled with sighs. "WH THEN the young May moon is beaming, | love," it is not only sweet to rove in Morna's grove, but it is delightful to repair with a judicious friend to the pretty little private theatre in a neighboring city, where there are the most charming performances, and always for the benefit of some good purpose. The company was first organized, we believe, to help the Sanitary work of the war; but taste and talent did not end with hostilities, nor, indeed, the necessity of charity, so the curtain still rises, and the treasury of the little theatre is still emptied into needy hands and coffers. Peerybingle's cottage, and there is the spacious chimney, and the contemplative cat, and-soft you, now-the fair Dot; and presently Tilly and the baby, and then John shaking off the snow, and Edward, and Caleb, and Tackleton, and May, and by-and-by Bertha and Mrs. Fielding. The charm of the acting was its freshness and uniformity. There was no stale "gag," no traditional hack-work, no star to which all other light was sacrificed, but each part was so happily conceived and rendered that the mirror was held up to nature with a general success that, upon the whole, we have never seen surpassed. There are very pathetic, almost tragic touches in the story, and they were very truly and tenderly expressed-not in the least overdone, but with a really powerful simplicity. The humor was not caricatured, and even Tilly was no more extravagant than was set down by Dickens. The audience was not demonstrative. It was natural, for the play was too well done for boisterous applause. There were no "points," which generally excite a vehement noise in the audience and ruin the play, but the exquisite spirit of the story pervaded the whole performance. It was a small chapel, disused probably, or certainly not very necessary in the neighborhood, which was converted-if the word may be used upon such an occasion-into a brightly decorated play-house, with a spacious parquette and one balcony. The house holds some three or four hundred, and as the tickets are privately sold the audience is secure from any unpleasant intrusion. On this May evening it was a gay but not boisterous throng, brilliant with the light Spring toilets of the fair; with those indescribable bonnets, like fairy basketcovers escaping with flowers and fondly caught and pinioned by invisible forces to the hanging gardens, and lofty terraces, and flanking curtains, sweeps, Then the green curtain came down and all was rolls, puffs, elaborate fortifications, and bold salients over. "These our actors" suddenly became names of hair, foreign and domestic, which now adorn the only and memories to a musing Easy Chair. But female head. An elderly spectator like the Easy could all these gentle spectators step up on the Chair is lost in wonder and utterly bewildered in stage and play as well as their friends who have these magnificent mazes of hair. How they toil just vanished from our view? Under all these for us, these bright and beautiful ones! Would we hairy palaces and towers and bead-capped pinnacles men wear each other's scalps to win the admiration lurks such a pleasant talent? So he asked as he of the sex? Would we devote innumerable hours slowly rolled along, and humbly sought not to plant of the week to the laying out of our exterior heads a castor upon a single silken train. If this be so, in marvelous triumphs of landscape gardening? if all these lilies and pinks and roses are but emFlowers, feathers, ribbons, laces, beads, pearls, bu- broidered napkins hiding a talent, we are curiously gles, diamonds, gold dust, silver sand, pins, tortoise- unfair to each other. Think what a hermit may shell, powder, horse-hair, wigs, scratches, ox-mar- live at the bottom of the garden moving out in front row, bandoline, rubbed, scrubbed, smeared, brushed, of you! Why not? The Tyrian dye was first fished braided, flounced, stuck, patched, hung, showered, up in the Murex. The pearl comes in the oysterthrust, bowed, puffed, tied, strained, squeezed-shell. And under the flowers, feathers, wigs, would we do it? Yet that is the treatment of the scratches, horse-hair, which compose this truly sutop of the head only! Such is the fond and pa-perb work of the barber's art, there may be a relic thetic devotion of the better sex! of nature as sweet and tender as any we have just seen. The orchestra has entered-a dozen pieces-and away they go into a waltz. Some of the wonderful heads faintly beat time. Some of the sweet young faces grow calm and rapt, as if gazing inward upon remembered joys-a perfect polka at Cape Maydreamy deur-temps at Newport. The roses and lilies of these cheeks are ruffled by no sharper memories. Was that an evanescent cloud-shadow of pain? It was only a remembered glove-button that snapped off at the Cape. It was the luckless Roman punch that dropped a little stain at the otherwise spotless sea-side hop. But before the rapt face the green curtain is drawing up, and here is the fairy prelude. IN speaking last month of the pleasant Shakespeare dinner at the Century, which we understand was mainly due to the happy thought and energy of Mr. William T. Blodgett and Mr. James Lorimer Graham, Jun., gentlemen well known to artists and authors, we mentioned the interesting statement of Mr. Richard Grant White that, after long and faithful search through the plays and sonnets and poems, the only passage in praise of women that he could find was that which he had selected as the motto of the toast to Woman "From women's eyes this doctrine I derive; They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; For the play was the Cricket on the Hearth, and a prettier play more admirably acted is not often seen. The stage appointments were complete and admirable, and all things worked harmoniously. The fluttering, glittering little fairies of the prelude We are glad to know that the accomplished comspoke their measured lines in clear, childish silvermentator proposes to follow the trail, and we may treble. The pictures in the air promptly shone and faded. The self-possessed queen fairy waved her wand, and, presto! the forest turned inside out, things rose and slid and fell and flapped, and here is John therefore look for a valuable monograph upon the subject. A writer in the Round Table, however, takes Mr. White to task, and quotes the speech of the Duke in the Twelfth Night, Act II., Scene 4: |