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From Chambers's Journal.
THE RULING PASSION.
ONE of the prettiest of the German wa-
tering-places is Schlössenbourg.

and behold the oddest specimen you ever set eyes on, and help to make her out." We went to the roulette-table. "There she is," said Harry, "between the hat with the scarlet feather and the old snuffy Gräfin. There; she has won again. Look at her litthe hands gathering up the silver florinsthey are like a child's hands; but her facedid you ever see such a face?"

"I can see nothing," said I, "but spectacles and a false front, and a large, old-fashioned bonnet, and a little wizzened figure. What can it be?"

"There she loses now. See how she clasps her little hands, but plays boldly again, without a moment's hesitation; only she seems to consult some written notes on a card. Lost again; poor little old lady! it is evident she is not a witch."

A long, straight, tedious avenue takes you to it from the bright-looking town of F; twelve long miles without a railway; but when you get there, it is like a garden with houses in it, not houses with a garden to them-a garden filled with flowers, exquisitely kept, tastefully laid out, stretching into a park and woods that an English duke might envy. Then there is a conservatory, with tall palm-trees and other exotics; a Chinese temple, with gaslights at night, that are contrived as if they sprang from amongst the flowers; and morning, noon, and night, music-from one of the best bands in Germany. You may sit and hear it in the garden, sipping coffee all the while, or you may go into a well-lighted room, provided with every newspaper in every language you could desire, fitted up like the most luxurious drawing-room. You may also remark in the one long street of which the town of Schlôssenbourg consists, that I should scarcely have remembered the every other house is a banker's or moneychanger's, where all kinds of facilities for obtaining or changing money are offered.

The heap of winnings was now reduced to a single gold piece, a double Frederick d'or. The little old woman seemed to hesitate; she looked eagerly at her notes, then took up the money and disappeared so rapidly that I did not see her leave the room.

circumstance or the personage who seemed to have impressed Harry so strongly, but for the appearance of the mysterious little old woman again at the table two or three days afterwards. This time I was determined to watch her; it was in the afternoon rather dusk, but before the tables were lighted.

"How rich and prosperous the little town must be," you remark; "what a beneficent government;" for all these luxuries are given for nothing. No visitor is asked to pay for the expensive garden that surrounds his lodgings, or the gas, or the music, or the She had an umbrella, on which she newspapers, or the sofas-all is generously leaned with a limping gait, the old bonnet, provided by some invisible power. Let us and a large, dark shawl. She went straight walk into the noble saloon with its lofty up to the table, and without hesitation placed painted ceilings, past the soft-seated news-a double Frederick d'or on a single number room, and we shall see the munificent pro--I think it was three. I looked at her as vider of flowers and music-the board of green cloth, the bank and its directors, the rouge et noir, and the roulette-table.

The bank is obliged to lay out a certain portion of its enormous profits every year on the place; the gardens, the conservatories, and every luxury are kept up to render attractive the temple of the blind goddess.

It is a mistake to look for fiery passions, deep despairs among the players; most wear an outward calm; there is only a sort of fixed, haggard look and contraction of the mouth sometimes to be detected, that speaks as with an inward curse.

I had come to Schlossenbourg as the medical attendant of an old and valued friend as well as patient. I had no money to risk, and I was determined not to be seduced by that strange chink of gold, and the atmosphere of excitement pervading the rooms.

My friend, Harry Melville, found me in the reading-room one evening. "Come," said he "Halford, as you are a philosopher,

the table turned; her hands were tightly clasped, her neck stretched out. The umbrella on which she leaned for a walking-stick had fallen down, and she did not seem aware of it.

"Elle ne tourne plus-trois!" said the croupier. The little witch had won thirtysix double Fredericks.

She gave an unmistakable shout of ecstasy. "Oh, beautiful!" said a clear, shrill, child's voice, and she snatched up the gold pieces, and actually ran out of the saloon. I turned to follow, but she had disappeared, leaving the umbrella on the floor. I picked it up, thinking it might lead to some acquaintance with the mysterious little person.

My invalid had become worse, and I was much taken up with him, and did not go to the Cursaal for some days. Sitting one afternoon in the garden with him, we were listlessly watching some children, both German and English, engaged in a game of hide-and-seek, chasing each other round the

trees. A little girl, whose remarkably grace- again there, don't tell anybody; for, you ful movements had caught my attention, know,"-this she said in a whisper, "they suddenly exclaimed with a laugh and a wont let children play." shout: "Oh, beautiful!"

The voice was identical-I could not mistake it with that of the little old woman of the Cursaal. I was determined to be convinced of the fact, and when I again looked at the perfectly childish creature of eleven years old, I could not believe her to be the I rose from my seat as she came near, but was rather puzzled how to accost her. I have an odd sort of shyness with children, I feel so afraid of encountering either of the two extremes of shyness or pertness. At last I bethought me of the umbrella.

same.

"Stop, my little lady!" said I, very timidly. She looked round wondering, and with the softest blue eyes in the world. "Have you not lost something lately-the other evening in the Cursaal ?"

Poor little thing! all her fun and frolic were gone. She blushed and hung her head, and I saw the ready childish tears swelling under her eyelids.

"I don't know, I"-she murmured; and I felt so guilty in tempting her to an untruth, that I said at once: "You dropped your umbrella when you were dressed up the other evening."

She came quite close up to me; all her shyness was gone. "O sir," she said, "if you have found me out, don't tell upon me, pray, don't. Never mind the umbrella; and, sir, if you should see me again, so, dressed like an old woman, don't take any notice."

"But, my dear little girl, or my dear old lady, I cannot promise any thing, because I am sure I should laugh. What can be the reason of such a disguise?"

She went away out of the garden with a sedate step, and her face, thin and pale when not animated, had lost its childish expression. I watched her, and longed to follow and know what the mystery was. She stopped, and looked back hesitating, and I instantly joined her. "Shall I send your umbrella," said I, "or bring it you here tomorrow?"

"Never mind that," she said. "If you will only tell me where you live-I may-I don't know; but papa wont let anybody come, and we may-O sir, we may want a friend!" She burst into tears, and then, with an effort to repress her sobs, said: "Tell me where you live?”

I readily gave her my card, and pressed her slight little hand as she ran away.

A few days after that, in the Cursaal, I again saw the strange little figure. I went and stood opposite to her, but I believe she did not see me. She had, as before, a double Frederick d'or, which she changed into silver, and began to play first cautiously, and consulting some written directions, and winning every time; she then staked gold pieces, and again won. Then grew more reckless, and placed high stakes on a single number-she lost; staked again-lost again, and then her last remaining gold pieces were raked off. I could not see her face for the absurd disguise, but as I saw her glide from the table, I instinctively followed. rushed down the steps, and into the garden. When I came up, she had thrown herself on a garden-seat, had torn off her disguise, and with her childish hands covering her face, was sobbing in the bitterest despair. When she looked up, on hearing my step, it was sad to see such wild sorrow in a child's face. "My poor child," said I, going up to her,

She had not the shadow of a smile as she answered: "I cannot and may not tell you; and perhaps I was wrong not to say at once," what is it?" 'No, it was not my umbrella'-and yet that would be a story. It is so hard to know what is right; isn't it, sir, sometimes ?"

Her companions here came to call her to play, but she said in German-which she spoke like a native "No, I must go home now." Then turning to me with a sort of involuntary confidence, she said: "There is nobody but me now to attend to poor papa, and it was very wrong indeed of me to stay playing here.""

"I wish," said I, "you would tell me something more of yourself; I might help you, perhaps, and your papa too."

She shook her head sadly. "I dare not," she said. "It would vex him so much that he might die. We don't want any thing now-just now, I mean; only, if you see me

She

"O sir, O sir," she sobbed, "that cruel man!" Then a sudden idea seized her; she sprang up. "Don't you think, for once, only once, he would give me back a little money, and let me try again?"

"I think not," I said. "How is it that you do this, and know so little? Tell me all, and let me perhaps help you."

She looked wistfully in my face. "If you would lend me a Frederick d'or, I should be sure to win this time."

"I will lend it to you," I said, “but not to play-take it home."

She hung back, and blushed. "I dare not-I cannot go home." Then she burst into a passion of sobs, exclaiming: "Oh, no; papa would die: it would kill him to see me come home with nothing-all lost!"

"Let me go home with you," said I. | features; his hands also were delicately "I am a doctor; if your father is ill, I may formed. He was making efforts to speak, be of use to him."

She hesitated, and then, with a sudden resolution, took my hand, and led me on. It was a turning not far from the Cursaal, down a lane, and into a yard, where there was a stand of donkeys at one end, and a washerwoman at the other. The door of a mean house stood open, and my little guide asked me to stop at the bottom of the stairs, while she first went up to her father. I watched her light step, and saw her open a door very cautiously; then a shriek of alarm and horror rang through the house, and I waited no further summons to rush to the

room.

The sight that presented itself was indeed appalling on the bed lay a man apparently lifeless, the pillow and the sheets covered with blood. I immediataly raised his head, and found the bleeding proceeded from the mouth and nose-he had broken a bloodvessel. The shrieks of the child had brought more assistants than enough, and by dismissing some, and making use of others, I succeeded at last in restoring consciousness to the invalid, and calmness to his poor little daughter.

and tried to point still to the table, when Alice's quick eye fell on a letter which he must have received in her absence. She held it out to him. I saw the hectic mount to his cheek; and with a flash of the eye and a violent effort to raise himself and to seize it, he exclaimed: "Thank God! I have not ruined my little Alice. It's all her luck, and she deserves it all." The effort brought on a return of the bleeding; he fell back exhausted, and never spoke again.

The letter, whose perusal had so strongly affected him, proved to be the announcement of a considerable fortune, which had been long in litigation, having been adjudged to him, and at his death, to his daughter Alice. His name and family were discovered by this and other papers.

The rest we could only guess; his fatal propensity to gambling, his illness, and his sending his child, when unable to go to the table himself-living thus, by what he had called her wonderful luck, sometimes in ease, sometimes on the verge of starvation; and the end of the feverish, fitful life coming as I have said.

Poor, desolate little Alice did not now want friends; aunts and cousins who had ignored her existence, and avoided her gambling father, now disputed with each other so violently her bringing up, that she stood a chance of being torn up by the roots altogether.

While applying remedies, I was obliged to stop every attempt to speak on the part of the patient; but he smiled at Alice, whose every faculty seemed absorbed in watching him, and turned his eyes towards the table by the side of the bed. On the table were a pack of cards and a pair of much-used dice, a note-book to prick the numbers, and another with a pencil by its side, and filled with calculations. The man's face was haggard and emaciated, evidently in the last stages of consumption, but of finely chiselled enbourg.

I did not lose sight of her; and when, many years after, I met the graceful, somewhat pensive girl-for she always retained a shade of melancholy-she had never forgotten her friend the doctor of Bad-Schloss

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son's cure can be purchased wholesale at from two and a half pence to five pence per pound, with a large proportion of prime joints. This might be sold in retail at threepence to sixpence, and confer a great boon on the community. The meat is considered quite good enough for our soldiers and sailors, and only requires a fair trial to become an article of regular home consumption."

From The Literary Gazette.
AN ARCTIC BOAT JOURNEY.*

|voyage of nine hundred miles in open boats, was proposed to his companions by Dr. THE modern story of arctic enterprise Kane. For himself, he said, it was a simple equals in variety, and perhaps surpasses in duty of honor to remain by the brig; come interest, any tale of heroic adventure of what might, he would share her fortunes. which the world has yet heard. It is spirit- Twenty-four hours were allowed for deliberstirring, in these days of luxurious habits ation, and at the close of that time eight and of smooth, easy living, to know that men resolved to remain with their commandthere are men yet among us of the grand er and nine agreed to incur the desperate old stamp-men who are ready to face any risk of a voyage to Upernavik (one of these danger, to undergo any fatigue, to forsake men, however, soon returned to the ship). friends, and home, and country, in order to In either case, the chances of life were exenlarge the boundaries of knowledge, to in- tremely small. For the whole company to crease the stores of science, and to satisfy have remained in the brig, would have been that thirst for enterprise which seems so pe- to convert the vessel into an hospital, if not culiarly a feature of the Saxon race. into a grave. In attempting the southward The sickly and timid counsel of utilitari-voyage, there was at least the possibility of ans, who, after Manchester fashion, depre- success, while those remaining with Dr. Kane cate any risk which is incurred without the would have augmented means of health and prospect of an immediate and obvious ad- comfort. vantage, will never weigh with men of the The story of this expedition, and of its ulclass to which we are alluding. And it is timate failure, is related by Mr. Hayes in a well that this is the case; for the love of simple and unaffected style, without the slightknowledge for its own sake, the capability est attempt at fine writing. But a book of of enduring hardships and the readiness to this kind would gain nothing whatever by submit to them, the generous ardor which is the craft of the littérateur. The interest is unacquainted with fear, and can calmly look too intense, the incidents too varied, to redeath in the face, the belief in the ultimate quire any heightening of the effect. Mr. gain which will compensate for all present Hayes has succeeded in bringing the scenes suffering, form the main elements of a noble of arctic life before us in all their terrible character and the basis of all that is truly reality, and his minute but not wearisome illustrious in national history. The narra- details enable his readers to form a lifelike tives of arctic adventure, like the enterprises picture of the arctic world. And a marvelthemselves, are now extremely numerous, lous picture it is-gloomy enough in the and, with the exception of mere compilations, there is not one of them which will not repay perusal. How curious it is, by the aid of a good map, to follow out the different lines of discovery; and even the map itself, apart from any other record, has a strange tale of its own to tell. Look at the names which have been given to the bays, capes, and islands discovered in that ultima thule. Almost every one of them has a touching significance and meaning. Some recall the history of past adventures, and the names of arctic sea-kings, which are dear to Englishmen; others land one on some pleasant spot of the home country, and betray by no dubious token the heim-wch of their discoverers; while others, again, like Fury Beach, Point Anxiety, Cape Desolation, and Cape Farewell, seem at once to reveal a tale of endurance and of suffering.

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The "Boat Journey now before us is a record of hardships and of dangers incurred by eight brave men who formed a portion of Dr. Kane's party on the second Grinnell expedition. In the autumn of 1854, the alternative of being ice-bound for a second winter in Rensselaer Harbor, or of risking a * An Arctic Boat Journey in the Autumn of 1854. By Isaac J. Hayes. Richard Bentley.

background to have afforded fresh images of horror to Dante or Milton: while the light and warmth surrounding the "figure pieces " bring out in exquisite relief the human interest of the landscape.

We shall not attempt to track the steps of Mr. Hayes and his party through the devious windings of their course, and to describe the difficulties with which they had to contend; but we shall endeavor to give our readers some idea of the life led by these brave men during a portion of the time that they were absent from the "Advance." The hope of reaching an open sea, and thus of escaping to Upernavik, stimulated them for a while, and sustained them through almost incredible hardships. Sometimes a storm threatened to engulph them, sometimes the masses of floating ice appearing likely to crush the boats, they were compelled to haul them up upon the floë; anon, à crack in the ice divided the cargo from its masters; or blankets, bread-bags, and buffalo robes became soaked in the water. On they went, sometimes almost starved, often drenched with rain and spray, with the thermometer at twenty-one degrees, and their clothes "stiffening on them like pasteboard:" still on-now hauling their boats on the rocks;

now dodging through the packs; now fearing that they should be frozen up and perish; now hoping against hope that they would yet gain the open sea,

teams, I returned to the hut. The blinding snow which battered my face, made me insensible to every thing except the idea of getting out of it; and thinking of no danger, I was in the act of stooping to enter the doorway, when a "That we should feel despondent under the sudden noise behind me caused me to look circumstances was, perhaps, quite natural; but around, and there, close at my heels, was the now, as on other occasions, there was exhibited whole pack of thirteen hungry dogs, snarling, in the party a courage which triumphed over snapping, and showing their sharp teeth like a the distressing fortunes of the day. Stories, drove of ravenous wolves. It was fortunate such as sailors alone can tell, followed the cof- that I had not got down upon my knees, or they fee, and interrupted the monotonous chattering would have been upon my back. In fact, so im of teeth; and Godfrey, who had a penchant for petuous was their attack, that one of them had negro melodies, broke out from time to time already sprung when I faced round. I caught with scraps from Uncle Ned,' in all its varia-him on my arm and kicked him down the hill. tions, 'Susannah,' and 'I'm off to Charlestown, The others were for the moment intimidated by a little while to stay.' Peterson recited some the suddenness of my movement, and at seeing chapters from his boy-life in Copenhagen and Iceland; John gave us some insight into a runner's' life in San Francisco and Macao; Whipple told some horrors of the forecastle of a Liverpool packet; but Bonsall drew the chief applause, by Who, wouldn't sell a farm and go to sea?"

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the summary manner in which their leader had been dealt with; and they were in the act of sneaking away, when they perceived that I was powerless to do them any harm, having nothing in my hand. Again they assumed the offensive; they were all around me; an instant more and I should be torn to pieces. I had faced death in several shapes before, but never had I felt as then; my blood fairly curdled in my veins. Death down the red throats of a pack of wolfish dogs had something about it peculiarly unpleasant, Conscious of my weakness, they were preparing for a spring; I had not time even to halloo for help -to run would be the readiest means of bringing the wretches upon me. My eye swept round the group, and caught something lying halfburied in the snow, about ten feet distant. Quick as a flash I sprang, as I never sprang bestood before me; and the next instant I was fore or since, over the back of a huge fellow who whirling about me the lash of a long whip, cutting to the right and left. The dogs retreated before my blows and the fury of my onset, and then sullenly skulked behind the rocks. The whip had clearly saved my life; there was nothing else within my reach; and it had been dropped there quite accidentally by Kalutunah as he went down to the sledges.'

There were greater perils in store for them. At length they found that they could go no further; to retreat was as impossible as to advance. The shore on which they were cast was more barren than any they had yet seen. "The hills were covered with snow; the valleys were filled with drift; the streams were all dried up; the sea was shrouded in its gloomy mantle. Night-the long arctic night-was setting in; already the sun was below the horizon during the greater part of each twenty-four hours, and in a short time he would sink to rise no more.' " With food enough to last them for one fortnight, and with only fuel sufficient to cook their food and melt water, they commenced a desperate struggle for existence. The first thing to be done was to build a hut. Fortunately, they had an ice-chisel with which they could loosen the frozen stones, which they carried Their main hope now is in the savages, on their shoulders. These were cemented but the supply of food from them is very unwith sand, shovelled up with a tin dinner- certain. Often the verge of starvation is plate into a a discarded bread-bag. Their oars served for rafters, over which the boat's sails were stretched out and secured by heavy stones. To thatch the canvas they were compelled to search beneath the snow for moss. All this consumed a weary time, and the prospect of starvation was upon them. Fox-traps were set, but the animals refused to be caught; they tried to eat the rocklichen, but though it kept off the sensation of hunger, it made them ill. Their condition is fast approaching the horrible." A visit from the Esquimaux affords some immediate relief; they bring with them frozen meat and blubber. In connection with this visit, Mr. Hayes has a tale to relate which we must let him do in his own words :

“Leaving the hunters to look after their

reached-a few days more, and all will be over; but again food is brought them. juicy bear's meat, puppy chops, and birds. Their spirits revive; and the perusal of Walter Scott's "Fair Maid of Perth," or "Ivanhoe," coupled, spite of Dean Close's anathema, with a genuine "Havana," infuse a genial warmth in that snow-imbedded hut.

One of the visitors to the hut is deserving of mention. She was a widow lady, and her husband's soul having passed for a time into the body of a walrus, she was, of course, prohibited from dining off that animal. But as the walrus happened to be the only food then in season, she was compelled to satisfy herself with frozen birds, which had been killed the previous summer. However neither grief nor hard fare appear to have

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