and women's that I knew that solitary eye belonged. There was but one that puzzled me, and that only for a time. It was a small dead-grey eye, much blood-shot. This-simply because, of all the cloud of witnesses' about me, I could not father it upon a face I knew-fascinated me more than all the rest. At length At length I solved its secret.

Years ago I was a passenger on board a ship in which there were mutiny and murder. After some desperate fighting and much bloodshed quiet was restored, but at the close of the encounter the deck of the vessel was slippery with blood, and on one side lay a poor dying wretch— the leader of the mutineers-whose face had been literally half shot away by the captain's blunderbuss. I remember now the shudder that crawled over me as I saw the poor fellow sinking, with groans and curses, into his last sleep. I remember now the horrible half-glazed look of his one grey blood-shot eye. That was the eye that puzzled me; but as my senses became gradually calmer I read its mystery and fitted it, with all the others, to its proper face.

The eyes vanished, as suddenly as Ezekiel's Wheel revolved, and then came the last stage of my sickness. This was the Era of the Orient,

when all the pomps and pageantries of Eastern romance held possession of my senses. I walked beneath groves of palms and saw the maidens of Circassia gleam through the trees with crystal water-jars upon their heads. The East flushed full upon me. My eyes only closed upon my chamber to open in Bagdad or Constantinople. I lay in a half-dream watching now the women of the harem tossing sweetmeats at each other, or playing bo-peep between the cool white couches in the Oda; now marking columns of Turkish lancers moving, in half shadowy splendour, over the blue brow of a line of hills, marbled here and there with ruined mosques and temples, far away against the sunset; now in listening to the converse of a dozen moody merchants, reclining, pipe in mouth, on the clean straw mats of the divan, the fire-flies darting and dazzling about their heads like sparks shaken from their meerschaums; now in watching the movements of some old familiar friends from the Arabian Nights;'-the prince with the petrified legs, for instance, was constantly before me, his face shrouded in a sad Byronic sort of eclipse that hinted rather than proclaimed his sorrow-and now in joining some troop of pilgrims, odorous

with the wealth of precious spices that they carried, wandering prayerfully to the Prophet's Tomb.

From this last mild stage of my delirium I awoke to life. I had been for many hours lying helpless on the strand of the Great Ocean on which one black barque rides for ever and for ever, with a captain at the prow whose name is Death. Once or twice the phantom craft had drifted very near; its dark shadow fell across my forehead, and a gaunt and grisly hand came forth to lift me in. But it pleased the Giver of all Good Gifts to restore me to health. The recollection of my suffering, however, still at times all but obscures my reason. I think of those ten thousand years of ceaseless agony, and large drops of perspiration stand, like dew, upon my brow. I am in hopes that by forcing myself to make a record of the diagnostics of my illness all recollection of it will be permanently obliterated. Thus have I carried out the Italian legend'etched' my suffering in order to exorcise the mournful memory of it for ever.

A

FOR THE BOYS.

ND CHILDHOOD has its jubilees and

its Olympiads. How devoutly are its

red-letter days observed-how keenly its movable feasts watched and waited for! Have you ever noticed the grim chronological correctness of the boys-how they bring out their marbles on a particular day, and never think of building a grotto until this year's oysters have come in? And this is not simply local. Having written for information on the subject to some young friends of mine in St. Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, Bagdad, and Kamschatka, I am in a position to say that marbles 'are in' on the same day all over the world. 'Why,' asks one of my correspondents-and I admit his inquiry is conclusive-how could it be otherwise? "When marbles are out, smugging's

about!"' The pastimes of youth, how they arise, and how they are kept up, would be worth a paper. Thus, just to show what I mean, who invented Prisoner's Bars, and are there any sacred writings upon the game in our national libraries? Suppose a dispute arose upon the subject between two neighbourhoods, how could it be settled in the absence of documents? There is a game, again, called 'Mike,- Mike,-strike-a-light,' about which I should like to know a thing or two. It is played, as every one who has had the benefit of the run of the streets ought to know, in this way-A boy purloins the steel busk of his sister's stays, and with a select company of partners starts -the night being tolerably dark-round back streets and down alleys, striking the steel wand on the pavement at the corner of every turning he takes until the sparks fly again. These sparks give an intimation to the opposite side-for of course there is an opposite side--as to which way the possessors of the busk are going. The pursuers accordingly follow the sparks as the Indian follows the crimson trail of a wounded enemy. When they come up with the retreating party, they capture the busk, and then, appointing their own leader, make off with it themselves. Now,