and the sale which the book obtained have given me some reason to believe that I have not altogether failed in my endeavors to elucidate the subject, and to facilitate the labors of both teachers and learners of English Grammar. In a short time after the appearance of the work a second edition was called for. This unexpected demand induced me to revise and enlarge the book. It soon obtained an extensive circulation; and the repeated editions through which it passed in a few years encouraged me at length to improve and extend it still further; and in particular to support, by some critical discussions, the principles upon which many of its positions are founded.-lutobiography.

URRAY, WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON (" AD

IRONDACK MURRAY "), an American clergy

man and novelist; born near Guilford, Conn., April 26, 1840; died there, March 3, 1904. After his graduation from Yale in 1862, he was licensed to preach, and in 1864-68 was pastor of churches in Greenwich and Meriden, Conn. In 1868 he was called to the pastorate of the Park Street Congregational Church, Boston, Mass., engaged in lecturing; and from 1869 until 1873 delivered Sunday evening talks in the Boston Music-Hall, which were popular. He resigned his charge in 1874, to engage in business and to preach to independent congregations. His works include Adventures in the Adirondacks (1868); Music-Hall Sermons (1870–73); Words Fitly Spoken (1873); The Perfect Horse (1873); Sermons Delivered from Park Street Pulpit (1874); Adirondack Tales (6 vols., 1877); How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year, and Other Stories (1887); The Story of Manielons, Daylight Land (1888); How John Norton the Trapper Kept His Christmas (1891); Mamelons and Ugava, a legend (1891).

THE CATASTROPHE.

It was a stormy night. The wind was blowing a gale; not a star was visible. The wind came from the southeast; raw, and damp with a briny dampness. The force of a thousand leagues of unimpeded violence was in it; it was full of lusty strength, of unchecked might, rageful and fierce. The centre of the storm movement was in the far Atlantic; but, as it swept round on its invisible axis in fearful revolutions, Long Island split the periphery of its power like a wedge, and sheared off a mighty column, which poured itself into and down the Sound, sweeping it from end to end. The waves ran high; they rose out of the darkness, vast volumes of on-rolling water, and rushed against the steamer's prow as if they would keel her over and drive her downward to destruction.

Only a few of her full complement of passengers were on deck. Some were in the main saloon, gathered in knots for comfort. Others sat moodily apart, communing with their fears; while not a few were in their staterooms, or down below in their berths, sick and thoroughly frightened. The air was full of foreboding. The prevalent feeling was that of alarm. The plunge of the vessel as she dived downward into the hollow of the sea; the tremulous shocks that shook her from stem to stern; the quivering that convulsed her huge frame, and tried her timbers in all their joints as the great sea struck her; the groaning of the machinery, and now and then the rush of waters overhead as some sea swept over her bulwarks

revealed to those that were within the saloon, or lay stretched in their berths, that the gale was at its height.

A few of the passengers were on deck; some were sailors, and from habit kept an exposed position; others, while not seamen, were sufficiently familiar with voyaging, and of such a temperament, that a position on deck and the sight of a storm were more congenial to them than the protected parlors. Among these our friends could be numbered. It was not in accordance with the temperament or habits of Herbert and the Trapper to stay between decks when such a storm was raging, and the lad could not remain separate from his companions. Indeed, his behavior and remarks revealed the fact that he was familiar with the different portions of the vessel, and with the proper management of such a craft in a storm. He evidently had knowledge of the machinery, knew the name and use of all the equipments, and showed no inconsiderable acquaintance with the force and action of wind and waves, and even with the reefs and islands of the coast along which the course of the vessel was now directed.

“I don't know what we should do if anything should happen,” said Herbert; “the clerk told me there were six hundred passengers aboard, and at the tables tonight I thought I had never seen so many women and children in one boat at a time. I don't know what would become of them, or any of us for that matter, in a sea like this if ___”

Fire! FIRE! F-I-R-E!

The effect of such a cry on shipboard at night in the midst of such a gale, on a crowded steamer, can never be known to those who have not heard it; nor communicated to those who quietly sit in safety and at ease, reading its description on the printed page. In the great saloon, when the awful sound swept through it, men engaged in conversation stopped - looked with startled interrogation into each other's eyes, with faces that on the instant turned white as ashes. Women with a sudden gesture placed their hands above their hearts as if they had received a sudden stab. Some continued sitting as they had been, as if stiffened to the position. Others, with their hands still on their hearts, sank back in a dead swoon. Children stopped their play and stood staring at their elders. The sick in their berths stilled their groans and lay straight on their cots as if dead, listening with pent breath.

On deck all was hurry and confusion incident to such an emergency. Hose were being fitted, pumps got in motion, the crew was being told off into companies, and the proper officers put over them. The captain was a brave man, and skillful; the officers supported him nobly, and most of the crew obeyed the voices of discipline. The places of those who faltered were more than made good by volunteers, amid whom the Trapper and the Lad were efficiently prominent. Brave men and braver women were among the passengers, who exerted themselves to still the tumult. The captain himself went into the main saloon on his way to the engineer's room, and addressed the passengers in brave and hopeful words. He said they were in danger that he did not deny -- but that he had been in great danger before, and came out all right; the ship was on fire, he admitted; but he stated that the pumps were working well, and if they could not subdue the flames, he hoped to keep them under until he could make harbor.

The captain passed on and entered the engineer's room; counselled a moment with the chief, and then, with three carpenters, began to explore the forward hold of the vessel, to find the location and the extent of the fire. It took but a brief search to discover that the whole forward part of the ship beneath was a mass of flames. The freight was of combustible material, and thoroughly ignited. The captain looked at the dreadful spectacle for an instant, while the lines of his face grew absolutely rigid, and said:

"My God! The ship is a furnace!"

He stood another instant in profound thought, during which his quick and fearless mind had considered all the contingencies, and without speaking to the three men that were with him, he started for the deck and pilot-house. He summoned the chief engineer and his officers around him, and stated what he had discovered — laid the whole subject in a few terse words before them and said:

Gentlemen, in twenty minutes the saloons will be like an oven, and the windows of the pilot-house will be cracking. Have you anything to suggest?"

The first officer, a sailor from boyhood, whose head and beard were a heavy gray, said promptly:

“ Captain, we must beach her.”

66

The officers looked their assent.

" It is our only course," said the captain. “ Pilot," said he, turning to the man, can you beach her?” The other deliberated a moment, and said:

"Captain, I am ready to take any responsibility that a man in my position should take. I am ready to execute any order you give; but I will not take the responsibility of running this steamer, with six hundred passengers aboard on to a coast that I know nothing of, beyond the knowledge I have of the lights, the reefs, and the harbors. It would be a mere chance if I got her within half a mile of the shore."

Not a man spoke. They felt as if the horror of death were shutting down around them. They were brave, they were calm. They showed no sign of fear. They could meet death as men should meet it; but they could not tell how to escape it. Suddenly the captain's face lighted, with the light which was the expectation of a hope, of a conjecture, of a possibility. He darted out oi the pilot-house, swung himself down among the crew, who were busy with the pumps and the hose, and, with a concentration of voice that penetrated the roar of the storm like a knife, shouted:

"Is there a man here who knows this coast?"

When the captain dropped among them the men stopped their work and stood staring at him. Only the old Trapper and Herbert, each of whom stood above the forward hatch, hose in hand, directing the streams that the pumps sent through the swelling tubes downward, kept their position. The captain waited a moment, while the light faded from his countenance as no response came, and then as if in despair, he shouted: “I

say, is there a man here who knows this coast? For God's sake, some of you speak !”

Again, no reply came, and he was on the point of turning away, when the Lad, who had been kneeling under the protection of the bulwark trying to stop a rent which the pressure had made in the hose that the old Trapper was tending, rose out of the shadow and approaching the captain, said:

“Yes, sir, I know the coast."