possesses the necessary materials?

One curious little history I can tell concerning a sale in recent years of the Z—— collection of pictures and objets d'art, which will, to those who know it not, prove "a strange story."

A former owner, distinguished by his social qualities and position, in a fit of passion unfortunately killed his footman. The wretched victim had no friends, and was therefore not missed, and the only person, besides his slayer, aware of his death, and how it was caused, was the butler. The crime was therefore successfully concealed, and no inquiries made. But after a little time the butler began to use his knowledge for his own personal purposes.

Putting the pressure of the blackmailer upon his unhappy master, he began to make him sing, by receiving as the price of his silence, first a fine picture or two, then some rare china, followed by art furniture, busts, more pictures, and more china, until he had well-nigh stripped the house.

Still, like the daughter of the horse-leech, crying, "Give, give!" he made his nominal master assign to him the entire estates, reserving only to himself a life interest, which, in his miserable state of bondage, did not last long.

The chief butler on his master's death took his name and possessions, ousting the rightful heirs; and after enjoying a wicked, but not uncommon, prosperity with his stolen goods for some years, he also died in the odour of sanctity, and went to his own place.

His successors, hearing uneasy rumours, determined to be rid of their tainted inheritance; so placed all the pictures and pretty things in the sale-market, and otherwise disposed of their ill-gotten property.

Chat No. 3.

"Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,

Wary of the weather, and steering by a star?

Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,

To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar."

—R. L. Stevenson.

The best holiday for an over-worked man, who has little time to spare, and who has not given "hostages to fortune," is to sail across the herring-pond on a Cunarder or White Star hotel, and so get free from newspapers, letters, visitors, dinner-parties, and all the daily irritations of modern life.

Those grand Atlantic rollers fill the veins with new life, the tired brain with fresh ideas; and the happy, idle days slip away all too soon, after which a short stay in New York or Boston City, and then back again.

The study of character on board is always pleasant and instructive, and sometimes a happy friendship is begun which lasts beyond the voyage.

Then, again, the cliques into which the passengers so naturally fall, is funny to watch. The reading set, who early and late occupy the best placed chairs, and wade through a vast mass of miscellaneous literature, and are only roused therefrom by the ringing summons to meals; then there is the betting and gambling set, who fill card and smoking room as long as the rules permit, coming to the surface now and then for breath, and to see what the day's run has been, or to organise fresh sweepstakes; then there is often an evangelical set, who gather in a ring upon the deck, if permitted, and sing hymns, and address in fervid tones the sinners around them; then there are the gossips (most pleasant folk these), the flirts, the deck pedestrians, those who dress three times a day, and those who dress hardly at all: and so the drama of a little world is played before a very appreciative little audience.

I remember on such a journey being greatly interested in the study of a delightful rugged old Scotch engineer, whose friendship I obtained by a genuine admiration for his devotion to his engines, and his belief in their personality. It was his habit in the evening, after a long day's run, to sit alongside these throbbing monsters and play his violin to them, upon which he was a very fair performer, saying, "They deserved cheering up a bit after such a hard day's work!" This was a real and serious sentiment on his part, and inspired respect and an amused admiration on ours.

The humours of one particular voyage which I have in my memory, were delightfully intensified by the presence on board of a very charming American child, called Flossie L——, about fourteen years old, who by her capital repartees, acute observation, and pretty face, kept her particular set of friends very much alive, and made all who knew her, her devoted slaves and admirers.

Her remark upon a preternaturally grave person, who marched the deck each day before our chairs, "that she guessed he had a lot of laughter coiled up in him somewhere," proved, before the voyage was over, to be quite true.

It was this gentleman who, one morning, solemnly confided to a friend that he was a little suspicious of the drains on board!

Americanisms, which are now every one's property, were at this time—I am speaking of twenty years ago—not so common, and glided from Flossie's pretty lips most enchantingly. To be told on a wet morning, with half a gale of wind blowing, "to put on a skin-coat and gum-boots" to meet the elements, was at that day startling, if useful, advice. She professed a serious attachment for a New York cousin, aged sixteen, "Because," she said, "he is so dissolute, plays cards, smokes cigars, reads novels, and runs away when offered candy." Her quieter moments on deck were passed in reading 'Dombey and Son,' which, when finished, she pronounced to be all wrong, "only one really nice man in the book—Carker—and he ought to have married Floey."

Mr. Hugh Childers, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was a passenger on board our boat, and having with infinite kindness and patience explained to the child our daily progress with a big chart spread on the deck and coloured pins, was somewhat startled to see her execute a pas seul over his precious map and disappear down the nearest gangway, with the remark, "My sakes, Mr. Childers, how terribly frivolous you are!"

She had a youthful brother on board, who, one day at dinner, astonished his table by coolly saying, as he pointed to a most inoffensive old lady dining opposite to him, "Steward, take away that woman, she makes me sick!"

A stout and amiable friend of Flossie's, who shall be nameless in these blameless records, on coming in sight of land assumed, and I fear did it very badly, some emotion at the first sight of her great country, only to be crushed by her immediate order, given in the sight and hearing of some hundred delighted passengers,