BY MARGARET JOHNSON.
I said, "When will the summer come?
Mamma, is it not late?"
She smiled, and answered. "By-and-by;
Be patient, child, and wait."
I asked papa if he would buy
A new wax doll for me.
He pinched my cheek, and said, "Not now;
Be patient, and I'll see."
"Nurse, tell me when my dear rose-bush
A blossom red will bear."
"Oh, by-and-by, my dear. Don't fret.
Come, let me brush your hair."
"When shall I grow so tall, papa,
That I can reach your head?"
"Quite soon enough, my little one;
Wait patiently," he said.
"Dear me!" I thought; "they all say 'Wait.'
I'll put my dolls away.
And go and sit upon the stairs
As long as I can stay."
Now I have waited patiently
For hours and hours and hours,
And yet the dear doll has not come,
The summer, nor the flowers.
I have not grown a single bit,
And now I know it's late.
I'm going up to tell mamma
It does no good to wait.
[AN ADVENTURE IN THE SUEZ CANAL.]
BY DAVID KER.
"So it seems a fellow called Arabi Bey, or some such name, is making a row in Cairo; but of course it won't come to anything—these things never do."
So spoke, after exchanging a few words with a pilot who had just come down the Suez Canal from Port Said, the Captain of our homeward-bound steamer from India, little dreaming how world-famous the "row" of which he spoke so lightly was to become not many weeks later.
"If these Arab fellows should ever want to destroy the canal," says a young English Lieutenant of Engineers going home from India on leave, "they wouldn't have much trouble with it. You see there's a regular hollow on each side here and there, and they need only dig through or blow up the embankment to run the channel bone-dry in no time."
His words are confirmed a few minutes later when a group of native goat-herds, as black and shaggy and wild-looking as the goats which they tend, wade out to within a few yards of the steamer, clamorously offering to dive for piastres (five-cent copper pieces). In fact, the Suez Canal, throughout its whole length of eighty-six miles, is as shallow as any ditch except in the very centre of the channel, and even there it has a depth of only twenty six and a quarter feet, with a mean breadth of seventy, widening to one hundred in the "sidings."
Every now and then we pass a neat little landing-place, surmounted by a painted station house overlooking a tiny patch of stunted shrubs and straggling flowers, doing their best to grow upon a thin smear of soil brought from a distance, and plastered upon the barren, scorching sand. A little farther on we see, perched on a steep sand ridge just at the point where the canal enters the wide smooth expanse of the Timsah Lake, a primitive sentry-box, consisting merely of a screen of dried grass, supported by four tall canes, beneath which a drowsy Arab is supposed to look out for passing steamers when he has nothing better to do.