funnel leaning aft, and apparently not far short of three thousand tons burden. She looked to be aiming straight for us, and the heavy sheer of her iron bow made her resemble a small island coming along. Two sparkling columns of water spouted up at an angle from each side of her stem, and their summits rose to close under the hawse-pipes; but as they arched over, they broke into foam, and girdled the dark red bottom of the speeding hull with a band of snow, the ends of which met under her counter, and streamed away in a glittering milkwhite line across the blue sea, until the eye lost sight of the delicate trail in the far distance.

When she was about a mile off, her people hoisted English colors, and slowed the engines, as you could have seen by the drooping of the two shining bow waves, like the gradual turning down of a fountain. I have no doubt the signal of our flag made them reckon upon coming across something tragical; and through the glass I could make out swarms of heads along the line of bulwarks, watching us.

"Stand by to hail her, Purchase," exclaimed Sir Mordaunt; and we all gathered together in a cluster abaft the main rigging to see her, while our men bustled about, letting go and tricing up, and dowsing canvas, that we might not swim out of earshot.

Now that we knew by her flag she was English, and took it, of course, that she was going home, we looked at her with an interest which, if you have crossed the ocean and been for days without speaking a vessel, you will sympathize with. She made the picture of home rise before us vividly-the English Channel, with its beautiful shores, the yachts whitening the offing under the Isle of Wight; the crowded Downs, with lowlying Deal sparkling beyond the glittering shingle; the noble, busy Thames, and the garden-like lands beyond its banks. A group of men were upon her high skeleton bridge, and one stood at the extreme end of it, waiting to hail us when near enough. Presently the turn of her wheel by a couple of spokes canted her head, and she drew out slowly (her engines being stopped), and we watched with admiration, as she floated abreast of us, the gradual unfolding of

her immense length, and the beauty of the whole picture of her red bottom coloring the blue water under her, and her green side full of flashing windows, and her massive stem standing up and overlooking the sea like a sheer cliff, while a trickle of gray smoke floated languidly toward the sky out of her leaning short funnel, and her rigging veined the heavens like a spider's web. Her poop was of middling length, protected by a very low bulwark surmounted by brass stanchions and white lifelines, so that we could clearly perceive the crowd of saloon passengers seated or standing, and watching us from under the awning. There were a great many women dressed in all manner of gay colors, and Miss Tuke hit the character of the picture neatly when she said to me that those people looked like a garden party out on a cruise. Binocular glasses and telescopes bristled at us from all parts of the vessel. I could well imagine the wonderment excited by the inverted and half-masted ensign aboard a yacht with a crowd of smartly-dressed seamen in her bows, well-dressed people aft, and the whole apparently coming up to a high standard of safety, luxury, and equipment.

Schooner ahoy!" came ringing from the steamer.

'Hillo !" bawled Purchase. "Why have you that distress-signal flying?''

66

We've three shipwrecked men aboard, that we took off a water-logged barque," vociferated Purchase; and if you're bound for Hengland, will 'ee let us send 'em aboard you?"

There was a curious movement among the people on the poop at this, and the man who had hailed us stumped along the bridge to where the knot of men were. I could not help thinking that the information they had got was a disappointment to many of them. A good deal of excitement had been promised by our flag, and Purchase's statement was no better than an anti-climax. Presently the man returned to the end of the bridge and sung out, "We'll send a boat ;" and after a short delay a boat swept round under the stern of the huge vessel, in charge of one of the mates, an individual in a long coat with gilt buttons, and a square-peaked cap. A

short ladder was thrown over the side, the boat hooked on, and the mate stepped aboard. He raised his cap very politely, and glanced around him with much curiosity, and then took a squint at the ensign, as if he could not reconcile that flag with the small business that had caused its display.

"I am glad that nothing is the matter with you," said he, addressing Sir Mordaunt, at once guessing him to be the owner. 'We hardly knew what to expect when we saw that signal."

66

Why, no," he replied, "not if I give them the means to get across to Liverpool. Would your captain take these poor fellows?" said he, addressing the mate.

"Certainly," was the reply. "I shall have to trouble you for the particulars of the rescue. Which are the men ?''

They were called, and came aft. Dressed in the clothes lent them by the yacht's crew, and having quite recovered their health, they looked very tidy, likely seamen.

This gentleman," said Sir Mordaunt to them, "tells me that the captain of yonder steamship is willing to give you a passage to Glasgow. I know that the port you want to get to is Liverpool, but as you are anxious to get home here is a chance you should not miss; and if I give this gentleman sufficient funds to pay for your journey from Glasgow to Liverpool, your being landed at Glasgow won't make any difference to

"Bear a hand now, and get your bundles into the boat, said the mate; and they skurried forward, while the mate went into the cabin with Sir Mordaunt, to take wine, and look at the entry in the log-book relating to the wreck.

In a very short time the three men were ready; and I saw them, as they said good-by to the Lady Maud's men, fling down their bundles and grasp their hands with both theirs. Indeed, I never saw gratitude more movingly expressed than in the postures and motion of these poor sailors. They came to the gangway where I was standing, and one of them said, "We should like to say good-by to Mrs. Stretton, sir."

"To be sure," I answered; and went to the skylight, where I called to the steward to ask Mrs. Stretton to step on deck. She came immediately after Sir Mordaunt and the mate had arrived, and the three men, pulling off their caps went up to her and held out their hands one after another. I did not hear them speak; I believe nothing was said; it was merely a rough, pathetic seaman's grasp of the hand on their part. The memory of their long anguish, their drowned shipmates, all those hours of famine and thirst, with Death the skeleton sitting among them on that waterswept deck, would well account for their parting in silence. I had my eye on the widow's face as she shook hands with the first man. It was firm, and she looked at him steadily; but she broke down suddenly when she took the second man's hand, and dropped her face, unable to look at him; and when the third man took her hand she was crying piteously. Miss Tuke put her arm through hers and led her away to the after end of the deck; and I was glad to see her go, for it was painful that such grief as hers should be watched by so many eyes, though God knows there was no want of sympathy for her.

The men then bade us farewell. Sir Mordaunt gave them his hand, and one of them held it as though he could not make up his mind to release it. "Goodby, mum! God bless you, mum !'' said they to Lady Brookes.

Now, my lads, jump into the boat," exclaimed the mate. But first let me tell you that this gentleman," indicating the baronet, "has given me ten pounds

for my captain to hold for you ;" and then, as if he feared this would excite another demonstration of gratitude and cause more delay, he sung out, "In with you, boys! Chuck your bundles down." The men dropped over the side, the mate, bowing to us all, followed, and as the boat shoved off the three men stood up and cheered us. In a very little while they disappeared under the stern of the great steamship, and shortly after the monster began to forge ahead.

It was a brave sight to see that huge and powerful fabric-that had lain motionless upon the swell which kept the yacht's masts swaying like a bandmaster's bâton-divide the water under the hidden propulsion of her screw. The trembling light under her quivered in her glossy sides, and the glass of her port-holes flashed and faded as her head came round to the north and east. A great body of black smoke burst suddenly out of her low, fat funnel, and the first belch of it shot up like a balloon; but the breeze was too light to incline the dark and gleaming pillar until it had reached a certain height, when it yielded to the pressure of the current up there, and leaned over into a most graceful curl, which, as it blew further and further toward the horizon, looked like a gigantic bridge arching the blue water, whose surface mirrored the league of sooty coil in a straight dark brown line, that might very well have passed in the distance for a shoal of mud.

But though she made a fine show, yet

she was sadly wanting in all those points of beauty which a sailing vessel offers. The pyramid of shining canvas, the stately leaning of the tapering masts, the swelling curves of the jibs, the lovely gradation of shadow and light upon the round cloths, and the sharp, clear lining of the delicate rigging upon them, were all lacking. Strength, even in its most majestic form, was expressed by that mighty red and green hull heaping the sparkling blue water at her side, and a torrent of snow pouring away from under her elliptical stern, that was radiant with gilt configurations, but there was no gracefulness. The eye had to seek the Lady Maud for that. And a beautiful sight she was, I make no doubt, for the passengers aboard that great receding steamer to watch. For so soon as the boat had gone clear of us, sail had been made, and such air as there was being abeam, every stitch of square canvas, and the studding-sails to boot, were piled upon the little vessel, until she must have looked like a big white cloud upon the sea. Soon the tinkling and churning of water alongside told us that the Lady Maud was contributing something to the rapidly-increasing interval that now separated the two vessels. In three quarters of an hour the great ocean steamship was no bigger than a nutshell upon the horizon, and when we went to lunch nothing was to be seen of her but a smudge of smoke hovering over the spot where she had vanished. -Fraser's Magazine.

THERE is a favorite legend in Germany of a certain luck-flower, which admits its fortunate finder into the recesses of a mountain or castle, where untold riches invite his grasp. Dazzled by so much wealth, with which he fills his pocket and hat, the favored mortal leaves behind him the flower to which he owes his fortune; and as he leaves the enchanted ground, the words "Forget not the best of all" reproach him for his ingratitude, and the suddenly closing door either descends on one of his heels and lames him for life or else imprisons him forever.

of the word Forget-me-not, and not the last words of the lover drowning in the Danube, as he threw to his lady-love the flower she craved of him. The tradition however, that the luck-flower, or key-flower, was blue is inconsistent with the fact that the primrose is the Schlüsselblume (key-flower). However this may be, there exists in Germany many subterranean passages under hill-sides, dating from heathen times and associated with legends of former treasures there;"

*

* Panzer, "Beitrag zur Deutschen Mythologie," 21, 40, with plans of the passages at

red archangel, or to the cowslip that of Our Lady's bunch of keys.

Of a similar nature to these extravagant fancies of the monks is the Turkish explanation of the geranium as a mallow that was touched by the garments of Mahomet; or the Chinese legend that tea-leaves are the eyelids of a pious hermit, who, being too frequently overcome by sleep, cut them off in despair and threw them from him.

Names of plants, even if given only in commemoration at first, obviously tend to suggest legends; and if there were no legend before, it is easy to imagine how easily they might arise from calling a plant after St. Robert or St. Christopher. Whether in any given case the name or the legend came first it is generally impossible to say. But the name herb-Margaret for the daisy (the eye of the day, according to Chaucer) illustrates the tendency of a name to attract a legend to it. Chaucer refers the name Margaret, as applied to the daisy, to St. Margaret of Hungary, who was maryred in the thirteenth century; while another legend refers it in the following verses to St. Margaret of Cortona, whose penitence edified the world about the same period:

There is a double flowret, white and red,
That our lasses call herb Margaret,
In honor of Cortona's penitent,

Whose contrite soul with red remorse was

rent;

While on her penitence kind Heaven did throw

The white of purity surpassing snow;

So white and red in this fair flower entwine, Which maids are wont to scatter at her shrine.

The flower, however, was really so called from its supposed resemblance to a pearl, and had nothing to do with any St. Margaret. The Greek for pearl was Hapyapirns, which, passing into Latin as Margarita, remained in Italian the same word, and in French became Marguerite, the same word in either language serving both for the pearl and the flower. Had the name really come from the saint and not from the pearl, it would surely have been also called after her in Germany, instead of being there the Gänseblume, or goose-flower, and actually having for one of its synonyms the name meadow-pearl.*

* Perger, "Deutsche Pflanzensagen,” 62.

The peculiarities of flowers in color, form, or smell have given birth to poetical fancies about them which are more remarkable for monotony of invention than for beauty of feeling. As a general rule, flowers spring from tears if they are white, from blushes or from blood if they are red. Lilies-of-the-valley are in France the Virgin's tears; anemones in Bion's idyl are the tears of Venus for Adonis; and the Helenium, which, according to Fliny, was supposed to have sprung from the tears of Helen, was probably a white flower. If we may believe Catullus, the rose is red from blushing for the wound it inflicted on the foot of Venus as she hastened to help Adonis. But if Stephen Herrick is right, who of all our old poets deals more fancifully with flowers, roses were originally white, till, after being worsted in a dispute as to whether their whiteness excelled that of Sappho's breast, they blushed and "first came red.” This is very like Ovid's account of the mulberry-fruit having been originally white, till it blushed forever after witnessing the tragedy enacted beneath it of the sad suicides of Pyramus and Thisbe. In German folk-lore the heath owes its color to the blood of the slain heathen,* apparently in recollection of Charlemagne's method of converting the Saxons, the two words being connected in the same way as are pagus and paganus; for as in Latin the inhabitants of the country villages far from the Christian culture of the towns came to be called pagans, so in German the inhabitants of the uncultivated fields where the heath, (or heide) grew came to be known as heathen (or heide).

ed in a similar strain to the foregoing. The blueness of the violet is interpretIn one of the poems of Herricks" Hesperides," violets are said to be girls, who, having defeated Venus in a dispute she had with Cupid as to whether she or they excelled in sweetness, were beaten blue by the goddess in her wrath. But according to the Jesuit René Rapin, whose once famous Latin poem “Hortorum" contains so many references to the flower-lore of his time, the violet was once a nymph, who, unable to es

*Warnke," Pflanzen in Sitte," 212.