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"The fact is," he said afterwards, "the boy is right, he will never make a farmer, and he seems to have some talent for mechanics, so he shall have his wish, and be an engineer. I feel more disposed to let him have his way now he has left off worrying and making himself disagreeable about it."

So George had his way, and he found it none the less pleasant because it was not his own choosing. Indeed it was all the sweeter when the Master into whose hands he had given it gave it back to him.

The Mariner's Song.

WET sheet and a flowing sea,

A wind that follows fast,

And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast;

And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While, like the eagle free,

Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.

"O! for a soft and gentle wind,"

I heard a fair one cry;

But give to me the snorting breeze,

And white waves heaving high;

And white waves heaving high, my boys,

The good ship tight and free,

The world of waters is our home,

And merry men are we.

There's tempest in yon hornèd moon,

And lightning in yon cloud;

And hark the music, mariners!
The wind is piping loud;

The wind is piping loud, my boys,

The lightning flashes free,

While the hollow oak our palace is,
Our heritage the sea.

"Ach! are you awake?" she said; "it is halfpast seven, and we have kept your coffee warm for you."

I soon joined the family at the round breakfast table, dressed, like them, in a light cotton dressinggown.

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Guten morgen-grüss Gott!" greeted me on all sides. When I had drunk my cup of good coffee and eaten my "milchbrod," Lydia took away the breakfast things and fetched the big book which lay on the shelf, from which the "morgen segen," or blessing for the day, was read.

Herr Hofrath had gone to business.

The mother took the book and put on her spectacles.

We all folded our hands, and listened while she read us a meditation upon a few verses of the

Bible and a hymn. Then Lydia said the Lord's Prayer in her low, soft voice, and her mother pronounced the blessing.

It was August, and though it was early, the sun was quite hot, and we had to shut all the green shutters to keep it out."

Rickole came in with a tub of water, and damped all the floors, and shook out the little carpet which was before the sofa in the visiting room, whilst we made our beds and dusted the pictures and furniture...

Frau Hofrath disappeared in the kitchen, Anna went to her sewing class, and Lydia sat down to her painting.

There was one thing I missed in this house, and that was a bath, so I said to Lydia, "I am going to the baths," and off I went, armed with a basket containing soap and towels.

The little boys with their knapsacks on their backs were just coming out of school, and munching their nice white rolls, as I came back down the long street. Heavy long-shaped carts, drawn by slight bay horses with high collars and bells, were going from house to house, whilst women with handkerchiefs tied over their hair, and looking something like men in petticoats, fished up the refuse outside each house with long spades, which they swung about like straws.

It seemed to me that every one in the street stared at me, and that "English" must have been written upon my forehead, but I soon found that it was not at me, but at my grey alpaca cloak and my large white straw hat they were looking.

At the corner of Silk Street there is a little shop where you can get candles, tobacco, and all 'other necessaries; two steps led down into it. I went in to get some stamps.

"Ach, Fraulein," cried Frau Ludwig, from behind the little counter, "so you have come back again!" And then she told me how her son had married and her boy become a soldier since I had left, and it took me a full quarter of an hour to buy my stamps.

"Vesper," or lunch, in the form of a boiled egg, was waiting for me when I came in.

At half-past ten I was to be at the Conservatorium, the big school for music, where all the professors sat in their separate rooms, like prisoner's in their cells, counting time to the old pianos, and finding the weather very hot.amrin

It was with rather a beating heart that I pushed open the big entrance door, and went up the wide stone staircase of the school to Room No. 9, and knocked gently.

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Eins, zwei, drei, eins, zwei, drei-ahn, Fraulein!" was the only answer; but it was my old professor's voice, and I took courage and knocked again."

Herein," said the voice, so in I walked.

The piano stopped, the pupil fell back in her chair with a sigh of relief, and the professor came forward and made me a low bow.

*** What !” I said, "have you forgotten the pupil who used to give you so much trouble?

He put on his spectacles, and then put out both his hands, and said the heat was the cause of all his mistakes, that he felt as though he lived in an

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The music came nearer and nearer, and the platz was soon filled with people. Officers in blue and yellow uniforms dragging their swords on the ground like the turkey-cock does its tail when it wants to show off. Business men, in black clothes, with large white umbrellas, taking the air before dinner. School-girls, with books and music under their arms, standing about in groups, and laughing and talking loudly. Now the soldiers appeared round the corner of the König-strasse, marched past the castle and dispersed, leaving the band to take its stand and play for another hour. The lieutenant in charge, saluting his friends, vanished also.

Then there was a general rush home, and I went back to Silk Street, not before I had met several old friends.

Frau Hofrath met me at the door with a little scolding for being late, that her "braten was nearly spoiled through the delay.

We sat down to dinner a party of eight.

We all began telling our morning's adventures. The young Englishman said he had been to the riding-school to see if he could get a decent horse to ride, and that he had seen a German student tied on to his saddle by two straps, jumping a pole a foot off the ground, that at last he had broken his spectacles by contact with the horse's head.

Herr Hofrath looked up from his soup, and laid the spoon down on the table beside his plate. "You ought to have been at work, sir, and not wasting your time with horses," he growled; but he was too kind to be really angry even at jokes on his countrymen, and the young Englishman did not look depressed.

After the soup came boiled beef and cranberries, roast beef and salad, and then Frau Hofrath and Lydia took away the dinner-things.

Herr Hofrath soon fell asleep in an easy chair, and Lydia and I had a nice long talk in our bedroom.

It was too hot to go out, so after we had drunk our coffee at three, we played duets and talked of what had happened since we last met.

In the cool of the evening, when Herr Hofrath came home, we put on our best dresses and took our work, and started for the Silberburg.

What the Silberburg is, and what I saw there, I must tell you another time, when I tell you about a German wedding.

We sat under the trees till about ten, and then we went home to bed.

I could hear the band playing in the garden behind our house, and the balls of the " 'kegelbahn," or nine-pin game, rolling on the boards as I fell asleep.

A Damsel with a Dulcimer.

BY MRS. A. HARPER.

II.

HIS proposal was no other

than that he should take the four children to England. It odbe was an English fashion, he said, to be amused by the singing and playing of foreigners, because the people did not care to sing and play themselves. He was the master of a travelling entertainment, and had revisited his native land on purpose that he might look out for precisely such children to take back with him.

Furthermore, Mr. Crispi showed his name printed on a card, and though neither Albert nor Rosa could read, this greatly impressed them. So much indeed did the stranger flatter, that Rosa consented that both her children should go for one year.

"I shall see them at the end of twelve months, and if they do not like to return again to England they need not, I suppose?"

"Oh, no!" Mr. Crispi said, "all would be at perfect liberty to please themselves about that." He was prepared to pay down half the wages he should give them for the first year at once, and he would add a handsome present for Albert and Rosa.

"And you will be able to go to Lorino and get well," said the wife, with tears in her eyes.

Mr. Crispi said he should give each child four pounds a year, besides paying their voyage each way and feeding them. Half of sixteen pounds would be eight, and to this eight he would add two, making ten English pounds, in all 250 lire or francs, an enormous sum as it seemed to these Italian peasants.

"Of course the younger ones will accompany," Mr. Crispi said, in conclusion.

"Oh, yes," answered Rosa.

"Rubino may go," said Albert, "but not Tessa. I could not spare Tessa-no."

"I could not go without Miss Tessa," said the stranger. "Her brother will take care of her, and it is only for one year. I should not say so much money if Miss Tessa were not included."

"Then we will take less," said Tessa's father. "Half would be enough, for that matter."

Mr. Crispi replied at once, very gravely, that he must have all the children or none.

"You cannot have any then," said Albert, angrily. "I cannot spare Tessa."

"Not spare Tessa, when I give up my own Julia for your sake, Albert!" and Mother Rosa cried passionately. "Only for one year, dear Albert, and by that time the 250 lire will have made you well. I shall go to your master with some money in my hand, and ask him to take it and promise me that the new vine-dresser shall have our house for one year-only for one year, Albert dear-and then we will all come back here and be happy again."

This last argument prevailed, and Albert engaged, though still with sorrow and reluctance, that Tessa should go.

No sooner had he said the word, than Mr. Crispi produced a paper, and requested Albert and Rosa to sign it. As they could not write, each put a large cross, which he said would do just as well. When it was too late to alter, Rosa remembered that she could not let the girls go unless placed under a woman's care, it was a great comfort therefore to her to hear Mr. Crispi say that his own wife had come with him to Italy, and was waiting for him at the port where they were to embark. He also said that two other children had already engaged to join him, and he mentioned their names. Albert found that he knew the father of these children, and this made him feel a great deal easier than he had done before.

The children were called in, and told that their parents had consented for them to go. Julia and Carlo were well content, and Rubino too, but Tessa, finding that the precious doll had been given her as a sort of bribe, grew angry and frightened, and begged not to be sent away.

Albert's resolution began to waver at the sight of her distress, but his wife reminded him that it was too late the paper had been signed; and Mr. Crispi, rising up, said that as everything was now settled, he would take his leave, and do himself the pleasure of calling for the children in three days from that time.

It was the last evening, and the little family sat together. Even Carlo was subdued by the prospect of separation, and stood by his mother with such a softened countenance, that her own heart failed somewhat at the thought of losing him. Julia was full of gaiety, and Rubino pleased in his new importance as Tessa's protector; the little one herself sat pale and thoughtful at her father's side. Something seemed to whisper to Albert that they might

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be sitting thus for the last time, and he stooped down and tenderly caressed her.

"My Tessa will not forget her father in a strange land?"

'Oh, no, padre mio! Forget you? I should think not," and the child sealed her words with a kiss. "I may not be here when you come back, little one."

"Shall you be at Lorino then, father?" asked she. "No, child; I do not mean that. I am ill, Tessa. People who are ill do not always get well." "But you will," she said hopefully.

"I don't know; and, Tessa, my heart is anxious. I am ill. I wish I could be kept in peace." The little girl did not quite understand, but tried to comfort him.

"I shall soon come back, padre mio. What shall I bring you from England? I will bring anything you like."

"Anything short of gold and precious stones, you mean to say, Tessa."

"I would bring you precious stones if I knew what they were."

"A pearl, for instance," he answered, laughing, and then added more gravely, "Such a pearl, Tessa, as your mother had when I married her. Your grandfather was a sailor, and brought it with him from India. Ah! child, that was a pearl of price. I meant it for you."

"Where is it now?" asked Tessa.

"Stolen," said her father, bitterly, “stolen by a man who called himself my friend."

"Never mind," said the child, "Mr. Crispi will give me lots of money; I promise to bring you a pearl from England. Will that do?"

“Oh, yes, Tessa, but you will forget.”

"No," she answered, shaking her small head gravely, "I will not forget, and it shall be what you said my mother's was—a pearl of price.” Next day Mr. Crispi came, and the children went away. Rubino said the trees and flowers looked as if they knew that they were going. Certainly Tessa's little goats did; they came up and rubbed themselves gently against her, and followed her along the mountain path till Rosa called them back.

They were to sail from Reggia; the two other children joined them there, and Mr. Crispi toɔk them all on board the steamer. His wife was not there to take care of them as he had promised, but none of them were very sea-sick, and they soon began even to enjoy the voyage.

Rubino and Tessa sometimes left the others, and ventured to walk to the other end of the vessel,