bottle, for the good pastor as he read.
The other boy was gone of an errand for a
neighbour.  Night had set in, and a gentle
breeze fanned the chamber through the open
door and paneless window.  People glided
cautiously by, from time to time, urged by
pity or curiosity.

After about an hour's stillness, the sick man
stirred, then tried to sigh, but the groan died
within him, and for a time he whispered; but
nobody knew what he said.  At length, after
the curate had applied a few drops of moisture
from an orange to his lips, he spoke
audibly.

"I was dreaming, Mary, as we war happy
with God.  The children had enow to eat; they
give me my good name back agen; an' we war
all very happy."  After a pause, and much
internal muttering, he resumed with a
perceptible spirit of energy, although his spent
powers made him scarcely audible.  "Oh,
Mr. Godfrey, if more would, like thee, on'y
come and see the poor, an what they suffers!
Tell the lads, sir, to wait a bit—but to
struggle on, for there is hope for the working
man.  An' bid the rich folk consider
the labourer, an' the parsons to be all like thee,
an' England will be right.  Mary, a drink,
dear: the heart is as dry as a cinder within
me."

His wife brought him a little cold water,
into which the curate squeezed some orange
juice.

"Mary!  To our Father, I commit thee,
girl, when I am gone.  I am dead afore I am
dead, leaving my Mary.  Kiss my forehead,
girl.  God bless thee!  Comfort these little
children, God! they be orphans now."

And he prayed inwardly.  In that hour
he had no succour but prayer, and the
remembrance of any good he had done in
his life.  The baby was crying on it's mother's
breast, and the candle trembled in the hands
of the weeping boy who still held it.  The
wife was still and pale; her heart was being
rifted from her.  The curate had bent his
knee in prayer, and comforted the dying and
the desolate.

TURKS AT SEA

FIVE-AND-TWENTY years ago, the
adventurous traveller on his way to Constantinople
suffered many hardships altogether unknown
to the traveller of the present year.  He was
fortunate, if he were not detained for a couple
of days at some fording place in France, in an
auberge without windows; if many unpleasant
incidents did not check his progress
through Piedmont; if, on his Mediterranean
voyage, under the auspices of a  garlic-eating
captain, he did not find it absolutely necessary
to sleep in top boots, to preserve his feet
from the ravages of enormous ship rats; if,
in short, he did not suffer under calamities
too numerous to mention.  As regards the
rats, let us note that the Genoese admiralty
allowed a sou a day for the support of a cat
in each ship of war.

Arrived at Constantinople, the traveller
was troubled for backsheish the instant he
arrived at the entrance to the port. The
captain of the port rowed off to the ship,
begged for a gratuity, and if money were
refused, talked about his sick wife, and
requested a donation of maccaroni. On
landing, the traveller was introduced to the
Turkish custom-house officers by an Armenian
dragoman. These officers were seated in a
row on a divan: each provided with a
chibouque and an attendant to serve coffee.
They were also provided with implements for
writing, and scraps of muslin, in which they
enclosed letters to persons of distinction.
They wrote a passport, or teskereh, holding
the paper on the palm of the left hand.

Once fairly in Turkey, the traveller, if
provided with proper letters of introduction,
was soon the object of great attention. The
fair wife of his host sprinkled his bed with
rose-water: and to the clinking of the
watchmen's iron-shod staves on the
pavement, he fell asleep. At five o'clock the
following morning, he was at the breakfast
table. And then he strolled out to pay visits.
He smoked chibouques at one house, and
drank sherbet at another, so frequently, that
he was soon in a most indolent condition,
and was kept on his legs only by the various
passages of life he met on his way. In one
street he saw a baker nailed by his ear to his
door-post, and coolly stroking his beard in
that unenviable position. The exposed
tradesman was suffering punishment for
having played tricks with his bread in a time
of scarcity. In an open space he saw some
miserable troops under drill by a foreign
drill master, watched from a window at
hand by a little, ugly, red-faced man, dressed
in a hussar uniform, and smoking his
chibouque.  This little man was the seraskier
pasha, a minister of war.  In another quarter
of the town he would meet an araba—the
ladies' barroche or chariot in Constantinople.
The araba was a waggon without springs,
drawn by oxen gaily decorated with ribbons.
Before the palace, he heard a band playing
lively airs, under the leadership of a young
Piedmontese: afterwards the famous Donizetti.
This band consisted of the royal pages, the
embryo grandees of the empire.  He saw
the Turkish fleet—then preparing for a cruise
in the Baltic against Russia.

To an English sailor of that year (eighteen
hundred and twenty–nine), many details to be
noticed in that fleet were curious, and often
ludicrous.  Now, we propose to follow an
adventurous English sailor of those days—
no other than Captain Adolphus Slade—on
board the captain pasha's first-rater, the
Selimier, and to accompany him on a cruise
of observation in the Black Sea.

Paint had done its utmost to give the ships
a respectable appearance.  The Selimier (with