En

66

Enter David, to him Ahimaaz, who throughout; and even in the tedious reports the result of the council. yet laughable dinner scene, the ex"Ahithophel (he says) was a wise temporized dialogue was designed to man; he went home, set his house in inculcate gratitude to God for the good order, and hanged himself." David things of this life. We will not venproduces his sword, declaring that he ture an opinion as to the utility of is now ready to lead his friends to such a performance, from either a battle. Joab remonstrates; David's moral or religious point of view; but life is worth ten thousand of theirs; at least the intention was unimpeachhe must not incur needless danger. able. We trudged homeward through David acquiesces, but begs Joab to the rain, feeling that the evening had "deal gently with the young man,' ," been well spent. We had been brought and all march off. Re-enter Joab, within a measurable distance of the without a moment's interval; to him a religious life of the fifteenth century; soldier, announcing, "I saw Absalom and it seemed to us that between the hanged in an oak." The short Biblical simple piety that inspired the Cherry dialogue in this place is somewhat Tree Carol" and the "Coventry Mysabridged; and Joab rushes out, say- teries," and that of the primitive Mething: "I may not tarry thus with thee." odists in the Black Country, the "Last scene of all, which ends this interval was much less than is generstrange, eventful history." David and ally supposed. an attendant are beside the tent. ter, successively, Ahimaaz and Hushai, who narrate the battle and the death of Absalom. David cries out : 66 My God! why hast thou forsaken me ?" The harmonium in the corner strikes up a few bars of the Dead March; and the THAT the new Baltic-North Sea body of Absalom is brought in, cov- Canal will do good to mankind in genered with a sheet, upon a bier that had eral is obvious enough, even to the evidently been designed for the obse- most blind of protectionists. But we quies of the swinish multitude. David are far from agreeing as to who in delivers an oration in the approved particular is to be maiuly benefited by style of the theatrical "heavy father," the magnificent waterway commenced concluding with the well-remembered eight years ago, and at the very door words so touching in their proper of the chief commercial city of Gerplace, so absurdly incongruous at the many. Hamburg is spending the most close of a long speech: "Oh! my son money in rejoicing, and, unless this Absalom, would God I had died for thee! The whole company, not forgetting the angels, gather around the bier; and sing, to the tune "Pilgrims of the Night," a dirge, of which the burden is, "Too late, too late for grace."

From The Speaker.

KILLED BY THE BALTIC CANAL!

HAMBURG, June 18, 1895.

money is raised by force, we may reasonably conclude that she expects to profit very much by the new short route between the Baltic ports and those of the western ocean. She will be disappointed in some, let us hope that she will be compensated in other respects.

So ended "The Sacred Drama of Absalom." It was unmistakably re- Five days ago I started in my little garded, both by actors and audience, cruising-canoe Caribee from Berlin, as a great success; and the hearty sing- and followed the great waterway to ing of the Doxology seemed in no wise Hamburg. I paddled and sailed down out of place, in view of the spirit in the beautiful Havel to its confluence which the entire proceedings were con- with the Elbe, and then followed that ducted. There was no suspicion of great stream until it lost me in a maze anything ludicrous in the performance; of Venice-like streets with a host of the conduct of the actors was reverent placards warning mariners against

drinking the waters of the Elbe. from morning to night like a galleyThen I knew that I was in Hamburg, slave. So the wife took the meat; the skipper made Caribee fast astern, and his two little children were quickly conciliated by a handful of cherries on the spot linked with the prospect of more in reserve. It was a barge about a hundred feet long, loaded with glassware bound for Mexico. It had been loaded some miles eastward of Berlin, and was going to Hamburg. That barge next year will find it profitable to avoid both Berlin and Hamburg, and to carry such a cargo to the nearest Baltic port—namely, Stettin - which is about half as far as from Berlin to Hamburg.

and that the cholera year was not yet forgotten. But this cruise of mine was not made for pleasure only. Many as are the delights offered to the canoeist who has a taste for reeds and swans and water-lilies and windmills, for fishing-huts and out-of-the-world peasants, glorious distances, and meadows twinkling with flowers. I had no eye then for these beauties-not even for the waterfowl that circled over me, the huge storks and cranes and wild swans that started up as I rounded some unexpected bend. It is a paradise for sport of the water kind but this in parentheses. My game was the German bargee, the skipper who navigates monster flat-bottomed craft from Berliu, from Dresden, from Breslau and Warsaw, and who carries the wares of Russia and Austria across the whole length of Germany in order to find the port where he may discharge his cargo for reshipment to England - perhaps around Cape Horn.

It was some hours before the right kind of a barge came along - not the mere local one carrying bricks or wood about the neighborhood of the capital, but a genuine long-distance craft with a wife on board and a box of flowers under the tiller. It was closing on to noon when my chosen barge hove in sight, at the tail end of a procession including five others—all in a tow of a puffy steamer. For credentials I passed up to the skipper a large paper parcel containing two pounds of good beef. I pleaded my helplessness, begged the use of his fire, and offered to pay him by a share of the good soup that would result from such a union of forces. The German bargee is a man of sentiment. He took pity on my condition and at once sought the assistance of his wife, who came on deck looking rather cross at being disturbed at her cooking. But she, too, melted when she heard that I was a poor forsaken paddler, who had nowhere to cook his food, and who could not get on to Hamburg excepting by working

A glance at the map is necessary to explain the new relations that will be raised by this new channel. The steamer that now comes to Hamburg for a cargo manufactured eastward of Berlin, will next month seek that cargo not at the mouth of the Elbe, but at the mouth of the Oder or the Vistula. My skipper had never seen a map, but he knew all the inland waterways of Germany and could tell me what the barges were carrying, where they were from, and whither they were bound. And, indeed, it was a marvellous procession that had no ending, and which goes on, year in, year out, whenever it is not prevented by ice. There were cargoes from far away on the borders of Poland that had come by way of the Vistula through the Bromberg Canal, westward through the Netze and the Wartha to the Oder at Küstrin. Down the Oder they had gone as far as the Finow Canal, which led them into the Havel, and so on to the Elbe. This is a journey covering nine degrees of longitude, crossing nearly all Germany from east to west, and following a line almost parallel with the Baltic. Such a cargo will no longer come to Hamburg; it will come to Dantzig, and be there shipped on board an ocean steamer by way of Kiel without so much as dropping anchor in the Elbe. My bargeeskipper pointed out to me cargoes of timber cut up into pieces about a yard long, and no thicker than one's arm.

They had been floated from far away | the frontier of Austria. But her days near the upper Oder, and were going of greatness are past.

to Hamburg, in order to be there loaded Before the skipper's wife had made on steamers bound for England, for ready my soup, I had passed barges this wood is used in the mines. Next enough to fill a page of statistics; but year these cargoes will be made up in figures are notoriously fallacious, as Stettin, and not Hamburg. All north every statistician knows. The good Germany needs coal to a vast extent skipper kept pointing out barge after for the factories that have grown up barge from points in Germany whose along her inland waterways. Ham- geographical situation made it clear burg has been the chief depot for this that soon these waters would see them commodity - not merely in supplying no more. The cholera gave Hamburg the towns along the Elbe, but Berlin, a sharp blow, but the sharper one is Breslau, and beyond. Henceforward that involved in declaring open the sea-going colliers will bring their loads waterway between the North Sea and to ports on the Baltic, such as Memel, the Baltic. Yesterday Hamburg was Königsberg, Elbing, Dantzig, Stettin, facile princeps the commercial harbor Rostock, Lübeck.

of Germany; to-morrow she begins a In other words, Hamburg to-day decline, slow but distinct. She will ceases to be the nearest port to the soon be known for the ruins of her great centres of German consumption. picturesque warehouses, the excelShe will remain the first seaport of leuce of her eating-houses, the VeneGermany by reason of the excellence tian-like beauty of her thoroughfares, of her harbor, and the fact that she is the Venetian-like character of her hisat the mouth of a river which carries tory. On her epitaph we shall read: barges from the North Sea to beyond" Killed by the Baltic Canal."

POULTNEY BIGELOW.

A MOTH-CATCHING PLANT.-This plant, | for its sweet juices is placed at its base. (Araugia albens), which is a native of Attracted by the powerful scent and the southern Africa, was introduced to New Zealand quite accidentally about seven years ago, and since then it has been extensively propagated there, on account of its effective service as a killer of destructive moths. Wherever the climate is mild, the plant is an exceedingly free grower; it twines and climbs with great luxuriance, and produces immense numbers of white or pinkish flowers, which have a very agreeable scent. These flowers attract innumerable moths. On a summer evening a hedge of araugias will be covered by a perfect cloud of moths, and in the morning there will not be a single flower that does not imprison one or two, and sometimes as many as four insects of various sizes and genera. The action of the araugia is purely mechanical. The calyx of the flower is rather deep, and the receptacle

A

prospect of honey, the moth dives down the calyx, and protrudes its proboscis to reach the tempting food. But before it can do so the proboscis is nipped between two strong, hard, black pincers, which guard the passage, and once nipped there is no escape for the moth, which is held as in a vice, by the extreme end of the proboscis, and dies miserably. The rationale of the process is not yet explained. plant of araugia, covering a space of ten yards in length, will destroy as many hundred moths every night, and, consequently, prevent the ravages of fifty times as many larvæ. It is, however, a singular fact that in New Zealand, where the plant has often been cultivated for the express purpose of destroying the detested codlin moth (Carpocapsa pomenalla), that wily insect declines to enter the trap.

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