over, and the ship swings around until the instrument indicates that the other is dead ahead.

Again the Captain is hopeful of success, as he realizes that the enshrouding mist and the instrument before him place the advantage in his favor. His eye is fixed on the pointer of the dial, ever responsive to the electric current set up by the sound waves beating upon the sensitive diaphragm in the trumpet. The ship leaps forward until he hears through the ear-piece the throb of the enemy's engines. His heart beats fast, but he knows that he must be self-controlled.

The ships are coming together bows on. The American commander causes his ship to swing to starboard a little so as to point her bow away from the approaching enemy.

The instant for action has come. He starboards his helm in order to lay his ship across the course of the enemy. "Prepare to ram" is telephoned by the aid at his side. The ship swings around. The pointer swerves from the direction of her starboard bow to dead ahead. Has he been too late? Will he pass across her wake, or will he cross her path in time to receive her ram prow in his own broadside? The needle points ahead when the huge side of the enemy looms up through the fog.

In a moment, with a terrific shock, the ram bow of the victorious Kearsarge enters the side of the enemy, cleaving armor and deck-plating as though it were wood.

Slowly the victor backs off from her sinking enemy.

The rammed ship commences to deliver death-dealing shots; but she is fast sinking.

She can no longer elevate her guns enough to strike the Kearsarge. She has heeled too far. The firing eases.

All the Kearsarge's boats that are not disabled are manned and ready to render assistance to the vanquished.

Not a moment too soon. The ill-fated ship heels to starboard, her stern rising high in the air, her screws thrashing the fog in their upward flight, the flag under which her brave defenders had so well fought still waving at her trucks, and slowly sinks beneath the waves, sending up columns of water from her hatchways, and engulfing her crew in the mighty suction.

But few survivors were saved of the few hundred that had had victory so nearly in their grasp.

THE SAD STORY OF THE MOUSE.

BY KATHARINE PYLE.

One winter, when mamma was ill,
And scarce could move at all,
There used to come a little mouse
From out the bedroom wall.

Mamma would scatter crumbs for it;
'Twas company, she said;
She liked to see it run about
While she was there in bed.

And when mamma was well again,
The mouse would still come out,
And nose around in search of food,
And scamper all about.

At last one day—oh dear! oh dear!—
A naughty boy was I;
I set a trap to catch that mouse;
I'm sure I don't know why.

I'd hardly closed the cupboard door
Before the thing went, Snap!
I was afraid to go and look
At what was in the trap.

At last I looked; the mouse was there!
I carried it away;
I never told a soul of it;
I could not play all day.

And after that mamma would say,
"Why, where's our little mouse?
It must have found some other place
I think, about the house."

But, oh, I'd give my bat and ball,
My kite and jackknife too,
To see that mouse run round again
The way it used to do.

SHOOTING THE CHUTE.

BY WALTER CLARK NICHOLS.

More swiftly than the lightest-feathered swallow wings her flight southward in the fall, more rapidly than any railroad train in the world sweeps along its iron road, you speed down a long slide at an angle of about thirty-seven degrees. Your heart leaps into your throat as the boat you are in strikes the water and skims unevenly over the surface of a small pond, and then your heart comes back to its right place as you find you are unhurt. Then you give a gasp of pleasure, and are ready to try it all over again. For you have "shot the chute."

YOU SEE THE BOAT LEAP FORTY FEET AT A JUMP.

"Shooting the chute" is the invention of that intrepid swimmer and bold paddler Captain Paul Boyton. Captain Boyton, who is as brave as he is modest, is the man who has paddled over twenty five thousand miles on the principal rivers of the world in a peculiarly constructed rubber suit, over great falls, and through dark cañons, in Europe, Africa, and America; who has fought sharks and seals, and has had all sorts of strange adventures. The idea of the "chute" first came to him, he says, while shooting down the raging Tagus in Spain. In his book he says:

"The thought struck me as I was going into some subterranean passage, the perpendicular walls seeming to close in and swallow up the entire river. I was swept down by the mighty current, and was beginning to feel sure that I was being carried into some underground rapids, when I was suddenly dumped into a deep pool, where the course of the river was running smooth and placidly along."

The first chute in America was built in Chicago, and opened for business on July 4, 1894. It is nothing more nor less than an inclined roadway of wood or iron, starting at a height of from 60 to 75 feet, which, with a run of about 250 feet, descends to the surface of the water. On this roadway there are tracks upon which boats, each holding eight passengers, glide rapidly down. When the boat strikes the water, the impetus acquired in the descent causes it to "skim" over the water in a series of bounds, like a stone thrown by a boy in "ducks and drakes," some 300 feet to a landing-stage, where the passengers are disembarked.

But such a brief description doesn't even suggest the fun and the excitement of "shooting the chute." It is a sport where old and young can meet on common ground. In fact one poet has recently told how

"Little Jimmy was a scholar,
And his aptitude was such
That his parents and his teacher
Were afraid he'd know too much.
So his grandmamma said, 'Bless him,
I will take him into town,
And we'll go to Captain Boyton's,
Where they'll water-shoot us down.'"

Suppose you were to go down to the chute—for there are four chutes in different parts of the country now, in Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, and at Coney Island—you would see something like this: There is a big enclosure, with a high board fence around it, from which a huge incline stretches up. It looks like a toboggan slide, only far bigger than most. The man at the stile-gate says, "Tickets, please." So you pay twenty cents for each ticket, admitting you to the grounds and one ride each