with delight, the fire of our small encampment; and when, at last, I regained the spot, it seemed a very home that had sprung up for me in the midst of these solitudes. My Arabs were busy with their bread- Mysseri rattling tea-cups - the little kettle with her odd, old-maidish looks, sat humming away old songs about England; and two or three yards from the fire my tent stood prim and tight with open portal, and with welcoming look a look like "the own arm-chair" of our lyrist's "sweet Lady Anne." After the fifth day of my journey I no longer traveled over shifting hills, but came upon a dead level a dead level bed of sand, quite hard, and studded with small shining pebbles. -- The heat grew fierce; there was no valley nor hollow, no hill, no mound, no shadow of hill nor of mound, by which I could mark the way I was making. Hour by hour I advanced, and saw no change - I was still the very center of a round horizon; hour by hour I advanced, and still there was the same, and the same, and the same the same circle of flaming sky the same circle of sand still glaring with light and fire. Over all the heaven above, over all the earth beneath, there was no visible power that could balk the fierce will of the sun; "he rejoiced as a strong man to run a race; his going forth was from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there was nothing hid from the heat thereof." From pole to pole, and from the east to the west, he brandished his fiery scepter as though he had usurped all heaven and earth. As he bid the soft Persian in ancient times, so now, and fiercely too, he bid me bow down and worship him; so now in his pride he seemed to command me, and say, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." I was all alone before him. There were these two pitted together, and face to face; the mighty sun for one and for the other, this poor, pale, solitary self of mine that I always carry about with me. - CHARLES KINGSLEY CHARLES KINGSLEY. Born at Holne, near Dartmoor, Devonshire, June 13, 1819; died at Eversley, Hampshire, January 23, 1875. Vicar at Eversley, professor at Cambridge, canon of Westminster. Author of "Alton Locke," "The Heroes," "Glaucus," "Hypatia," "Prose Idylls," "Westward Ho!" "Hereward, The Last of the English," "The Water Babies," "The Good News of God," and two volumes of poems. Kingsley was an outdoor boy and an outdoor man. He delighted in long walks, was at home in the saddle, was fond of fishing and of traversing lowlying lands and reedy marshes, and loved to see the surf, and hear the roar of the Atlantic. All these points appear in his books some thirty-five of them in all - and the moral of his writings is always: "Be honest with yourself, be manly, dare to do right." THE THREE FISHERS THREE fishers went sailing away to the West, Away to the West as the sun went down; Each thought on the woman who loved him the best, Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower, And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down; They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower, And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown. But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbor bar be moaning. Three corpses lay out on the shining sands. In the morning gleam as the tide went down, And good-by to the bar and its moaning. THE SANDS OF DEE "O MARY, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee;" The western wind was wild and dank with foam, The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see. The rolling mist came down and hid the land: "Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair A drowned maiden's hair Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes on Dee. They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea: But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home (From "THE WATER-BABIES") "Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear Flowers laugh before thee on their beds Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong." BUT what became of little Tom? He slipped away off the rocks into the water, as I said before. But he could not help thinking of little Ellie. He did not remember who she was; but he knew that she was a little girl, though she was a hundred times as big as he. That is not surprising; size has nothing to do with kindred. A tiny weed may be first cousin to a great tree; and a little dog like Vick knows that Lioness is a dog too, though she is twenty times larger than herself. So Tom knew that Ellie was a little girl, and thought about her all that day, and longed to have had her to play with; but he had very soon to think of something else. And here is the account of what happened to him, as it was published next morning in the Waterproof Gazette, on the finest watered paper, for the use of the great fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, who reads the news very carefully every morning, and especially the police cases, as you will hear very soon. He was going along the rocks in three-fathom water, watching the pollock catch prawns, and the wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; and inside it, looking very much ashamed of himself, sat his friend the lobster, twiddling his horns, instead of thumbs. "What, have you been naughty, and have they put you in the lock-up?" asked Tom. The lobster felt a little indignant at such a notion, but he was too much depressed in spirits to argue; so he only said, "I can't get out." "Why did you get in?" "After that nasty piece of dead fish." He had thought it looked and smelled very nice when he was outside, and so it did, for a lobster; but now he turned round and abused it because he was angry with himself. "Where did you get in?" "Through that round hole at the top." "Then why don't you get out through it?" "Because I can't!" and the lobster twiddled his horns more fiercely than ever, but he was forced to confess. "I have jumped upward, downward, backward, and side ways, at least four thousand times, and I can't get out; I always get up underneath there, and can't find the hole." Tom looked at the trap, and having more wit than the lobster, he saw plainly enough what was the matter; as you may you will look at a lobster pot. if "Stop a bit," said Tom. "Turn your tail up to me, and I'll pull you through hind foremost, and then you won't stick in the spikes." But the lobster was so stupid and clumsy that he couldn't hit the hole. Like a great many fox hunters he was very sharp as long as he was in his own country; but as soon as they get out of it they lose their heads; and so the lobster, so to speak, lost his tail. Tom reached and clawed down the hole after him, till he caught hold of him; and then, as was to be expected, the clumsy lobster pulled him in headforemost. "Now take "Hullo! here is a pretty business," said Tom. your great claws, and break the points off those spikes, and then we shall both get out easily." "Dear me, I never thought of that," said the lobster; "and after all the experience of life that I have had!" You see, experience is of very little good unless a man, or a lobster, has wit enough to make use of it. For a good many people, like old Polonius, have seen all the world, and yet remain little better than children after all. But they had not got half the spikes away when they saw a great dark cloud over them: and lo, and behold, it was the otter! How she did grin and grin when she saw Tom. "Yar!" said she, "you little meddlesome wretch, I have you now! I will serve you out for telling the salmon where I was!" And she crawled all over the pot to get in. Tom was horribly frightened, and still more frightened when she found the hole in the top, and squeezed herself right down through it, all eyes and teeth. But no sooner was her head inside than valiant Mr. Lobster caught her by the nose and held on. And there they were all three in the pot, rolling over and over, and very tight packing it was. And the lobster tore at the otter, and the otter tore at the lobster, and both squeezed and thumped |