"An' she beginned fur to squeal so that the Cap'n, sez he to me, sez he, 'You git ashore somehow, quick.' Waal, my sons, we wuz about eight miles off yonder, an' I couldn't swim so far. But down in the fok's'le I had my trunk wot I'd carried off to bring home things in. So I went below an' emptied all the things out 'ceptin' a Chinese umbreller an' a Indian shawl. I brung the trunk on deck, an' sez I to the Cap'n, 'You rig a tackle an' lower me an' my trunk into the sea,' sez I, 'an' I'll git ashore right here. I've got friends on that there coast.' So he lowered us—me an' the trunk—an' the wind bein' fair, I set sail with the Chinese umbrella fur a sail. The old woman she stood on deck a-shakin' her umbreller at me, an' yellin' loud,
"'Don't ye dast to come back to this 'ere boat, ye old reprobate!'
"'Not as long as there are any land to stay on,' sez I to she, sez I.
"'I won't stand it!' sez she.
"'Then go to bed!' sez I.
"An' by that time the schooner were so fur away I couldn't tell wot she sez. It tuk me all night to git in half a mile o' the beach, an' then the wind changed an' I had to paddle. The surf smashed my trunk ag'in the pier; I lost my umbreller an' my shawl; but here I are, an' here I stays. An' the previous part o' my percedins I'll tell ye some other day, but jes now I'd like to see your mother an' ask her ef she's forgot how I like her coffee."
[RÖNTGEN RAYS.]
BY WILLIAM A. ANTHONY.
It is now some two months since the public was startled by the announcement that Röntgen of Bavaria had discovered that electric discharges in certain vacuum tubes, that is, tubes from which the air has been exhausted, gave out rays that would pass through wood, card-board, flesh, and numerous other substances opaque to light—that is, through which light would not pass, and would then affect the sensitive plates used in photographing, making it possible to show upon the plates the outlines of objects entirely hidden from the eye.