the deck of the Mighty Metropolis. It is a grand place for Jaques to soliloquise

"A fool! a fool! I met a fool on deck,

With many nuggets hanging at his watch chain;
And when he saw me, he exclaimed, 'Old fellow !
I'm going home to be a lord in England:

They make men lords when they are rich, you know.'

I said I did not know it: and he laughed,

As who should say, 'Well, this man is a fool
Not to know English customs better.'

He probably is right, and I am wrong,

Faith,

And great King Mammon makes his puffy peers."

By George, Loraine, you will have to help our laureate," said Tachbrook. "Come, we'll talk the matter over with the ladies in the saloon to-night. It will be queer if we cannot get up a play between us."

So full council was that night held, and much chaff transpired. Ultimately it was decided that As you don't like it was to be the name of the play; that Mr Cincinnatus Meunier was to write it, putting in as much poetry as he liked, and as much fun as he could; that there were to be two Rosalinds in doublet and hose, who were to fight for Orlando; that various other characters from Shakespeare should be introduced, especially Hamlet and Othello, and Romeo and Juliet,

and Jack Falstaff; and that anybody in the saloon who declined to play any part set down for him or her should be fined champagne all round. The irrepressible Leary constituted himself stage-manager, and the thing was done.

It would be impossible to describe the admirable fun which arose from this new method of treating Shakespeare. Cincinnatus worked out the conception charmingly. The two Miss Mansards were twin Rosalinds; Tom Jones was Orlando, making love to each in turn, and getting scolded by the other; Harold Tachbrook was Jaques; Wilson (Sir Edward) was Hamlet; Jack Manly was Falstaff; Stuart was Othello; Harry Loraine was Romeo, and made Tom Jones quite jealous, for Miranda played Juliet. As thus

Romeo. "O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek.

To being touched by anybody's glove." Cincinnatus Meunier spoke his own epi

logue

"We are going home, and the strength of steam Carries us on like a magical dream;

And we have no knowledge of whither we wend,

Save that England-England, lies at the end ;—

The land of life and of power and truth,
Where our dear old fathers lie under the sod,
Where we wasted the glory of our joyous youth,
Where live the men who dare believe in God.
So as home we go, as the great sails fill,
We lovingly parody Gentle Will—
The poet of poets, the man of men,
Who held all life in his wondrous ken.
O listen to Falstaff's mighty laugh;
Hear the mad Prince's easy chaff;
Mercutio see, in the street moonlit,
Ready with rapier, ready with wit ;
Think of love's fierce fever and fiery fret
Where Romeo embraces his Juliet ;
Think of all the scenes in the galleries grand

Which Shakespeare built for his own dear land—
Of his Palace of Poetry, noblest far

That has ever been touched by the morning star.

Ah here, mid-ocean, on the waters dim,

We are at home in England when we talk with him.”

"I call that an excellent good epilogue of yours," said Loraine that evening to the poet Cincinnatus, as they were slaking their thirst. "But when you do get to England, I recommend you to get some fellow or other to teach you versification. It's very easy. You should carefully study Dr Watts.”

1

Cincinnatus ejaculated.

CHAPTER VI.

LOTOS-EATING.

«Επέβημεν

γαίης Λωτοφάγων, οἵτ' ἄνθινον εἶδας ἔδουσιν.”

MANY ways are there of eating lotos. Pleasant is it to lie on emerald turf under heavy foliage, talking, or dreaming, or reading some such "summer book" as Curtis's "Lotos-Eating," or those "Leaves from the Diary of a Dreamer," which Pickering published in 1853. Although the Americans are so rapid a race, they excel us in that tranquil style of poetic prose which is represented in such books as these, -in Washington Irving's delightful pictures of the Alhambra and the Generalife, in Longfellow's "Hyperion," in Hawthorne's lovely sketches of both hemispheres, in Thoreau's

wonderful researches into nature's mystery. They seem to catch the magic of the world. better than we. The reason is clear. As yet there are wide stretches of wild country in the States. You can get beyond reach of the shriek of steam. You can bury yourself in serene and uninterruptible solitude. There are American villages, too, especially in the West, where life is simple and primitive, calm and idyllic.

Then there are the Adirondac lakes, of which we possess Emerson's magical pic

ture.

"Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft,

In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,

Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,
And greet unanimous the joyful change.

Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air,
That circled freshly in their forest dress,
Made them to boys again. Happier that they
Slipt off their pack of duties, leagues behind,
At the first mounting of the giant stairs.

Look to yourselves, ye polisht gentlemen!
No city airs or arts pass current here.
The sallow knows the basketmaker's thumb,
The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the task
He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,
Tell the sun's time, determine the true north;
Or, stumbling on through vast self-similar woods,
To tread by night the nearest way to camp?"