London, Eng.
Dear St. Nicholas: I have just arrived in England. When we were fairly out at sea, the first thing I did was to explore the great ship. It was four hundred feet long, made entirely of iron, and sank twenty feet deep in the water. The masts were of hollow iron, and seventy feet high. It took nine furnaces and forty tons of coal a day to keep the ship going. The crew numbered a hundred and thirty-five. It seems very wonderful that a great heavy iron ship should not sink; the reason it does not is that it is lighter than the water it displaces.
When we were a few days out, a flock of land-birds rested on our ship. We fed them with crumbs, and brought dishes of fresh water on deck for them, but after a day or two they disappeared. A little further on, a hawk alighted on the vessel, and one of the sailors caught it when it was asleep.
To find out how fast we were going, the sailors threw the "log," which was no log at all, but a long thin rope with a small three-cornered canvas bag at one end. They throw out the bag, and it catches in the water and keeps the end of the rope steady. The rope runs out as the ship goes. One sailor stands with a time-glass, which holds as much sand as will fall in one minute from one half of it into the other. The glass is turned just when a certain mark on the rope passes over the rail, and, when all the sand has run, the rope is stopped. As the rope has lengths marked on it by bits of colored cloth, the sailors can tell how far the ship has gone in one minute, and can roughly calculate from that its rate of speed by the hour. Formerly a real log of wood was used instead of the bag.
The greatest event of the voyage was seeing a school of whales. There were dozens of them spouting and showing their backs above water. Another exciting thing was meeting a ship so near that we could salute it, which is done by hoisting and then lowering the flag once or twice. Ships have flags of different kinds, and each has its own meaning. So by hoisting certain flags, the captains of distant ships can exchange news.
When nearing the Irish coast, a dense fog settled upon us, so that we could hardly see from one end of the ship to the other. All day and all night the great fog-whistle was kept blowing to warn other vessels that might be in our neighborhood. To see a light house or landmark was impossible, but the captain found out where we were by soundings. Every ship has a long piece of lead with a hole in one end which is filled with tallow. The other end is fastened to a rope, and the lead is thrown overboard and sinks to the bottom. When hauled up, some of the sea-bottom is found stuck to the tallow, and from this and the depth of the water, the captain knows where he is, for the kinds of sand and mud at the bottom of the sea, and the varying depths of water, are plainly marked on his charts.
I cannot describe to you what a welcome sight the land was, after seeing nothing but water for so long. But when we had left the great ship behind, it seemed almost as if we were leaving home, glad though I was to get ashore.
Your loving reader, F. D.
A correspondent sends us the series of "Beheaded Rhymes" which we print below. Each of the stanzas contains two examples of this kind of rhyming, and, in each example, the first blank is to be filled with a word that suits both the sense and the measure. The next blank that occurs is filled with all of the chosen word except its first letter; and this process goes on until the word can no longer be beheaded and yet leave another word. The making of such "Beheaded Rhymes" as these, in company, to see who can succeed best, sometimes whiles away very pleasantly a long evening of disagreeable weather.
A Night's Adventures.
It made a most tremendous ——!(1.)
I gave my horse a sudden ——:
He threw me full against an ——,
And broke my collar-bone.
"What can I do in such a ——?(2.)
My horse is gone, I have no ——,"