heavy brick walls of the choultry had been driven
more than a hundred yards by the force of the
water. A hundred trees were found broken across
within half an acre; and where they were still
standing further inland, the weed was hanging in
them at nine feet from the ground. Of course,
there were, as at Sheffield, marvellous escapes;
men swept along for miles, and then landed on
trees, to which they were able to cling; houses
left standing because they were to leeward of
some larger building which gave way. On the
water, too, the ruin was great. Boats, coasting
and ferry, came to grief in great numbers; of
three ships that were in the harbour, two—an
Arab and a Trench ship broke their moorings,
and drove ashore; the third, an English brig,
rode out the gale.

All this seems sufficiently common-place to us,
just because it is so impossible for us to realise
it. Few of us have seen a flood, even in Wales,
or the Highlands; in a flat country the effect is
worse, because more "unnatural." The writer
of this saw "Burton under Trent," and the
barrels rolling about like porpoises, and sweeping
down the narrow courts; and went about in
a boat that memorable Saturday, feeding with
loaves stuck on a boat-hook the people in the
outlying cottages, who had "dragged their pigs
up-stairs to save their bacon." But what is a flood
where a few dead pigs, or half a dozen drowned
sheep, are an event, compared to one such as
we have described? As a speaker said at the
Madras Cyclone Relief Fund meeting, it is
impossible for the mind to grasp such a calamity;
we must disintegrate it, and consider what is
involved in the loss of one family, and then
multiply by thousands. That meeting, by the way,
was a great success. A little vexation was felt at
the bishop's proposal to give tlie proceeds of the
church collections exclusively to the mission-
house; but he corrected his blunder after, and
spoke well, and to the point. The Honourable
Mr. Holloway called on the rich natives to help;
some said they were callous, but he had lived
long among them, and knew them better. They
have not belied his good opinion. Jeyaram
Chetty and Parthasarady Naidoo stand among
the honourables on the central committee.
Names like Sreemvasadayer, Esq., Runganada
Chastry, Esq., and the Honourable Lutchme-
narudu Chetty, have some of the largest num-
ber of rupees placed against them. Madrassees
cannot vie with the merchant princes of Bombay,
where Premchund Roychund gives two
thousand five hundred pounds at once to the
Calcutta Eund; but they are doing well; and we
too are doing well, and the natives will not
forget it. It is a pity we can't go out of routine a
little, and send Governor Denison and suite to
"inspect," and satisfy the Indian love of show
and ceremony; but we are doing the substantial
part, and we shall have our reward. The
natives will see that we are not only just, but
generous. We owe them something. There is
a deal of Indian money spent in England.
Batli and Cheltenham would not be what they
are but for the incomes of those retired
colonels and lieutenant-generals and ex-collectors.
People say your native always expects to be
helped; but now for once he has a fair
claim. The Masulipatam people are as helpless
as the Lancashire mill-hands. Well, we
mustn't become political; we have seen what
a revolving storm can do along the Coromandel
coast. Let us be thankful that there are no
cyclones in England; and that our sea walls
too are a tolerable protection against such
"high tides" as that of which Jean Ingelow
sings so sweetly; and which we suppose are
due to a fit of sudden fury on the moon's part,
or to the sea forgetting for a moment its "Thus
far shalt thou go, and no further."

IN THE UNTRODDEN WAYS.

MY brother Willie and I were orphans.
There was a large family of us once—six
children, boys and girls equally divided. We
lived, with our parents, in an old house in the
country, and had no near neighbours. A
desolate place everybody thought it, and I suppose
it was so, but I loved it from its being the only
home I had ever known, and full of old associations.
I'm afraid it was an unwholesome place.
It was nestled down deep amid trees and great
well-grown evergreens,—splendid evergreens,
and so shady in summer; but it is true that they
did hold the damp dreadfully; from some of the
windows we could stretch out our hands—as
children we used to amuse ourselves when it was
too wet to go out, by doing so, and plucking the
leaves and blossoms. The house, too, from
foundation to roof, was hidden by creepers, ivy,
and honeysuckle, and roses, all growing so thick
that the windows were just peep-holes, and great
straggling sprays used to wave across them, and
up above the line of the roof cornice. Oh,
lovely in summer the roses and the woodbine
were! clustering in long trailing masses about
the walls, and hanging over the porch, and
making shelter for dozens of sparrows' nests.
There were, too, great bowery elms and ashes,
and one huge walnut-tree almost leant against
the house, overhanging a part of it, built as a
lean-to; beautiful it looked; but in wet weather,
and ours was a very wet part of the country,
the perpetual drip, drip of it and the climbers,
had a dreary sound; and in the autumn the
leaves used to choke up the gutters, and make
such floods through the ceilings. Almost all of
them were stained by these overflows, and when
I was a little child, and used to wake early the
chattering of the sparrows in the greenery about
the window often woke me at daylight—or when
I was ill, which was not unfrequently the case,
I used to lie in my little bed and trace figures
and images in those stains. Things laid by for
a while got mildewed and mouldy, and some of
the rooms, the ones under the walnut-tree, and
those to the north, where the laurels and
rhododendrons—such rhododendrons!—grew close
against the walls, were, I must say, sadly dark
and cold, and so damp that the paper used to