not one of the three with the purity usually attributed to the native. Indeed, it could hardly be expected that anybody but a born philologist could master three mother-tongues: many people find it difficult to pass muster in one. Each of these languages was used with distinctly foreign idioms and accents, and French and Spanish words were interpolated in English sentences, and vice versa, with an effect at once ludicrous and puzzling. Among these gifted people were two brothers, José and Manuel Perico, who, as their names indicate, were of Spanish descent by their father's side; but, their mother being French, they were fully entitled to the use of her patois. They each possessed a small sloop-rigged fishing-boat, with which, being fishermen, by hook and, if need were, by crook, they eked out a livelihood. Their boats were frequently chartered for pleasure-excursions, and, without being strictly professional, upon emergency they performed with good acceptation the part of the gay gondolier. José was on the pier, but just about to go home. He was a tight, wiry little fellow, with olive complexion and coalblack hair and eyes,-intensely foreign in appearance, especially in the fashion of wearing ear-rings. "No, Señor nuestras," said he, when Mr. Eustace had made known his wishes. "C'est impossible. I go not to-day. My fam'lee is seek. Mon petit niño have got shill like damn." Not sail your boat! Nonsense! Here's your money. Now get her ready." The creole, overborne by his patron's impetuosity, took the money, and meekly arranged the craft for the little voyage. Mr. Eustace handed his daughter into the boat, stepped in himself, cast off the line, assumed the tiller, and was soon gliding over the shining waters of the bay, being himself Skipper, mate, and bosun tight, Contrary to his very strong convictions, Mr. Eustace did not know everything; and among the few matters about which his information was imperfect was seamanship. He had observed some of the more obvious manoeuvres of the boatmen, and in his presumption supposed that he understood the whole science. His objective point was a promontory on the opposite side of the bay, and he expected to reach it without changing his course. Suddenly he discovered that he was going into shore at least a mile above the point, and it became necessary for him to " go about," which, when done by José or Manuel, had seemed easy enough, but, when it became incumbent upon him, bristled with unexpected difficulties. He made the attempt,, and got things "tangled," as he expressed it; his daughter was frightened by the very eccentric behavior of the boat, and her exclamations of terror increased the confusion of her father's maritime ideas. The wind was freshening. The boat, though in full view from the pier, as well as from the frigate, was drifting farther and farther away. The frightened girl could see the limitless sweep of the waters which beyond the mouth of the bay stretched in ever-varying hues to the far horizon. A sea-gull, its white feathers gleaming in the sunshine, poised a moment above them, dipped daintily down to the sparkling blue water, then up and away toward the blue sky. There was no other sail in the bay; no sign of life along the shore; no sound save Mr. Eustace's labored breathing while he struggled with the knots of "Hossey's damned tackle" in a wild effort to disentangle and do with it something still more absurd than his previous perform ance. At this moment Mr. Clare, who, though in durance vile, had a fair view of the bay, cast his sea-going eye upon the little craft in the distance, and observed with some surprise its erratic movements. "All hands drunk," commented the middy charitably, unconscious of its precious freight. And at this moment Lieutenant Forsyth closed a brilliant run of forty points and won the game. And at this moment Falconer, who was now pensively strolling along the pier, had his attention attracted to a group of fishermen who were gazing out upon the water and gesticulating wildly as they talked. "Damned if that old land-terrapin ain't a-goin' to lose José's boat!" exclaimed one. "Eh! How? What that you say?" demanded Manuel Perico, who had just returned from the navy-yard. "What you say about José's boat? Hey?" 66 Why, that old gentleman and his daughter went off in José's boat awhile ago, and I'm damned if they don't go to the bottom. He knows no more than a cow about a boat." "Voto á Dios! Sacr-r-r-e! Damn!" By this time Falconer had comprehended the situation. "I'll give you a hundred dollars apiece," he shouted to the two brothers," to put me on board that boat!" "All right, m'sieur!" exclaimed José. "Hurry, Manuel! Le vent will blow like damn. Vamos!" how Although Miss Eustace had at the first irregular movement of the boat given way to natural terror, in the presence of real, deadly, and imminent peril she summoned her fortitude, and in silent and bitter agony awaited the fate that now appeared inevitable. She gazed at the town, which, transfigured by the distance, seemed an enchanted city. She looked at the great ship lying so still off the pier. How hard, hard, she thought, that of all the skilled men on board that vessel not one should come to her relief! She turned her despairing eyes to the sombre forests across the bay,-to the sandy slopes of Santa Rosa Island,-to the navy-yard: the gleam of its embowering shrubbery shone above its wall. Surely from there the perilous situation would be observed, and boats would be despatched to their rescue. But there was no stir or move "Vere is José ?" demanded Manuel ment, and soon the navy-yard too was left in much agitation. "He's gone home." "Courez, Pedro !" called Manuel to an urchin who was fishing off the pier. Run; tell José to come here queek, queek. Tell him his boat capsize in tree minweet. Vaya, Pedro! Run like le diable." Pedro, with all the ardor of the bearer of exciting news, started off in great haste, and the little group on the pier watched with intent interest the motions of the distant boat, which seemed every moment to grow more and more singular. "By damn!" cried Manuel, "she'll capsize! Ai, qué desgracia! Vere is José? Ah José! Adonde está? Ah! voilà José!" José was breathless with running. behind. The boat was drifting helplessly toward that remorseless sea which stretched illimitably away till its clear tones were absorbed into the tender tints of the soft blue sky. Ah, how ineffably sweet was life! And to be swept away-so young, so happy-under the smiling skies, to vanish out of the brilliant sunshine, like the foam that breaks and is seen no more! She averted her white face from the open sea and looked back at the sparkling waters of the bay. Suddenly her heart gave a great bound. A boat was moving toward them rapidly, -so rapidly that she could almost see the distance between them lessening as the seconds flew by. Her joyous exclamation roused her father from his pondering contemplation of the labyrinth of cordage into which he had contrived to wreathe the simple tackle of the little vessel. His selfesteem had been most cruelly cut down by his ignominious failure as a seaman, and, although on Lilian's account he would gladly welcome the rescue, he would have preferred, had he been alone, to take his chance, and owe his safety, if saved at all, to his own natural gifts and improvised seamanship. He cast one earnest glance at the approaching sail, then fell to work more eagerly than ever upon the hempen problem before him. "If," he said, "I could only get these ropes untwisted and the cursed boat on her course again before they get here!" Personal fear was not a very prominent trait of Mr. Eustace's character. Indeed, if it may be hinted that a defect lurked among the many perfections he possessed, he was at times a trifle foolhardy, and was ready to defy the Gulf of Mexico if it stood in the way of one of his crotchets. His daughter had implicit faith in her father's abilities, and believed, as he did, that he knew everything and could do anything; and no small addition to the agony of this hour of peril was the humiliation of finding that her confidence in his omnipotence had been misplaced, and that he had undertaken a thing which he actually could not accomplish. As the Doña Juanita-such was the rather grandiose name of Manuel's boat -approached the drifting excursionists, Miss Eustace saw that a tall figure, easily distinguished from the wiry little creoles, was standing in the bow. "Who can it be?" she thought. "Mr. Clare? Mr. Forsyth? No. Mr. Falconer!" A deep blush mantled her cheek. She looked at him earnestly. There was an intense anxiety in his face, an eager alertness in his attitude; he measured with fiery eyes the distance between the tossing boats. She knew that if in one of those sudden lurches she should be thrown overboard he would spring into the water after her without a moment's hesitation. "And he can't swim a stroke to save his life," she said In less than two minutes José had solved the problem which had so puzzled Mr. Eustace, and the two boats were soon beating up the bay. The wind which had brought down the Doña Juanita with such rapidity utterly forbade so speedy a return to the town, and their progress was necessarily very slow. Not too slow for Falconer, however, for Mr. Eustace, in his humiliation, uttered not one syllable, being evidently oblivious of everything around him, and the creole busied himself only in the management of his boat. As Falconer sat beside Miss Eustace, he wished that Pensacola Bay could stretch out indefinitely, and that this enchanted sailing over the sparkling waters-reddening now with the sunset-could continue forever and forever. For in the first moment of agitated meeting he had caught an expression in his lady-love's eyes which had given him a sudden rush of hopefulness. And so cleverly did he avail himself of the turn affairs had taken that by the time they reached the pier Miss Eustace had made the concession that, "Oh, she didn't know. It would all depend on what papa would say." "And if he consents ?" persisted Fal coner. "Oh well, I always agree with papa," she replied demurely. And this episode was all undreamed of by the much-meditating Mr. Eustace and the grumbling José. Now, how was it that this obdurate heart had succumbed so suddenly? Perhaps gratitude had some influence; perhaps she fully appreciated for the first time the strength and ardor of his attachment; perhaps there had been all along, hidden deep, some half-realized affection; perhaps-But what is this chronicler, that he should attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the feminine heart? At any rate, "True Thomas" and "Chevalier Bayard, Jr." were, despite their buttons, at a doleful discount. The star of the civilian was in the ascendant, and—as every black-coat among us should rejoice to know-so continued. One swallow, however, does not make a summer; and whosoever, THE FIELD-SPARROW. SMALI (A FABLE FOR POETS.) MALLEST of all small minstrels he! Cloud-filtered from the bending blue, O'er his unruffled heart and head. Though his blithe breast is quickly stirred No envy fills his healthful heart Because of their melodious art. Or o'er the leaf-bound valleys sweep, WILLIAM H. HAYNE. CHARLES LAMB'S DRAMATIC ATTEMPTS. | AMERICANS de as MERICANS take a peculiar delight in the humor of Charles Lamb, for he is one of the foremost of American humorists. On the roll which is headed by Benjamin Franklin, and on which the latest signatures were made by "Mark Twain" and Mr. Bret Harte, no name shines more brightly than Lamb's. It may be objected by the captious that he was not an American at all; but surely this should not be remembered to his discredit: it was a mere accident of birth. Elia could have taken out his naturalization-papers at any time. It is related that once a worthy Scotchman, commenting on the well-known fact that all the greatest British authors had come from the far side of the Tweed, and citing in proof thereof the names of Burns and Byron and Scott, was met by the query whether Shakespeare was a Scotchman also. Reluctantly enough, it was acknowledged that he was not,although he had parts not unworthy of that honor. So it is with Charles Lamb. He was an Englishman,-nay, more, a Cockney, indeed, a Cockney of the strictest sect; but he had parts not unworthy of American adoption. He had humor, high and dry, like that which England is wont to import from America in the original package. At times this humor has the same savor of irreverence toward things held sacred by commonplace humanity. Charles Lamb never hesitated to speak disrespectfully of the equator, and he was forever girding at the ordinary degrees of latitude and longitude. His jests were as smooth as they seemed reckless. He had a gift of imperturbable exaggeration; his inventive mendacity was beyond all praise; he took a proper pride in his ingenious fabrications; and these are all characteristics of the humor to be found freely along the inlets and by the hills of New England and on the prairies and in the sierras of the boundless West. He had a true sense of his high standing as a matter-of-lie man. Moreover, he had a distaste for the straight way and the broad road, and he had a delight in a quiet tramp along the by-path which pleased him personally, -a quality relished in a new country, where a man may blaze out a track through the woods for himself, and where academic, and even scholastic, methods have hard work to hold their own. Even his mercantile training, in so far as it might be detected, was in his favor in a land whose merchants are princes. And behind the mask were the features of a true man, shrewd, keen, and quick in his judgments, one who might make his way in the New World as in the Old. There is something in the man, as in the writer, which lets him keep step to a Yankee As Wordsworth wrote, tune. And you must love him ere to you He will seem worthy of your love. The Americans loved Lamb early, as they did Carlyle and Praed,-to name two, as dissimilar as may be, of the many British writers who have found their first full appreciation across the Atlantic. Charles Lamb's only acted play met in America a far different fate from that which befell it in England. And his writings were aforetime and are today more widely read in these United States than in Great Britain. his "Truly was our excellent friend of the genuine line of Yorick," said Leigh Hunt; and, although the phrase is not altogether happy, it serves to recall two of Lamb's chief characteristics, humor, and his love of the stage in general and of Shakespeare in particular. That Lamb was fond of the theatre admits of no dispute, though he was wont to chide his mistress freely. For Shakespeare he had an affection as deep as it was broad. Whenever these two passions crossed each other, the theatre must needs to the wall,—as in the sug |