which is attached a light line to keep it from being lost overboard. The head of the harpoon is spear-shaped, and has wide flukes. It is set on the end of an iron rod which protrudes from the end of the handle. A stout line of small rope is made fast in this head, and leads outside all the rigging to a tub, where it is carefully coiled up. Its end, however, is brought out of the tub, and made fast to a water-tight barrel. Now all is ready, sheets are eased off, so that the yacht will go slowly, and a sharp-eyed man is sent to the masthead. The sword-fish, conscious of the fact that, with his formidable sword, he can conquer any fish that swims, never gets out of the way of any thing that moves through water. So when he comes to the surface to sleep or bask in the warm water, he lies still with his back fin protruding. The man at the masthead sees this, and, hailing the deck, directs the helmsman how to steer until the harpooner in the pulpit sights the game. Then he takes command and guides the movements of the vessel, which is made to sail very slowly. At last the man in the pulpit is immediately over the fish. Then with all his force he drives the harpoon down upon the game, and hauling back the handle leaves the head in the fish. Away goes the stricken creature, just as a whale does, and the line goes smoking out of the tub. A cool hand stands by, and as the line is about all out heaves overboard the barrel to which it is fastened. The sword-fish goes off towing the barrel which he cannot sink; and curiously enough he always goes to windward. Now the small boat is lowered away, and the harpoon man, armed with a lance and the tub, takes his place in the stern. He is rowed out to the barrel, having waited, of course, till the fish is tired of towing it. He gathers up the line and begins to haul in the fish. Sometimes the big creature has to be played for nearly an hour before he can be brought close to the boat. Again he becomes enraged and drives his sword through the little craft. It is this spice of danger that makes the sport exciting. Sometimes the boat is sunk and the fishermen barely escape with their lives. But skilful hands usually manage to exhaust the fish, and when he is hauled alongside the boat he is despatched with the lance. Then he is towed to the yacht, where a line is made fast round his tail and he is hoisted aboard. A fish taken into Block Island harbor measured eleven feet from the end of his sword to the tip of his tail, the sword being three feet six inches in length. He weighed about three hundred pounds. The meat of the sword-fish is edible, though not especially choice. It is something like a very coarse salmon, with less flavor. A CHINESE native paper published recently a collection of some zoological myths of that country, a few of which are worth noting. In Shan-si there is a bird, which can divest itself of its feathers and become a woman. At Twan-sin-chow dwells the "wan-mu-niao" (mother of mosquitoes), a fish-eating bird, from whose mouth issue swarms of mosquitoes when it cries. Yung-chow has its stoneswallow, which flies during wind and rain, and in fine weather turns to stone again. Another bird when killed gives much oil to the hunter, and when the skin is thrown into the water it becomes a living bird again. With regard to animals, few are so useful as the 'jih-kih" ox, found in Kansuh, from which large pieces of flesh are cut for meat and grow again in a single day. The merman of the Southern Seas can weave a kind of silky fabric which keeps a house cool in summer if hung up in one of the rooms. The tears of this merman are pearls. A large hermit-crab is attended by a little shrimp which lives in the stomach of its master; if the shrimp is successful in its depredations the crab flourishes, but the latter dies if the shrimp does not return from his daily excursions. The "ho-lo " 66 is a fish having one head and ten bodies. The myths about snakes are the strangest of all. Thus the square snake of Kwangsi has the power of throwing an inky fluid when attacked, which kills its assailants at once. Another snake can divide itself up into twelve. pieces, and each piece if touched by a man will in stantly generate a head and fangs at each end. The calling snake asks a traveller, Where are you from, and whither are you bound?" If he answers, the snake follows him for miles, and entering the hotel where he is sleeping, raises a fearful stench. The hotel-proprietor, however, guards against this by putting a centipede in a box under the pillow, and when the snake gives forth the evil odor, the centipede is let out, and, flying at the snake, instantly kills him with a bite. The fat of this snake, which grows to a great size, makes oil for lamps and produces a flame which cannot be blown out. In Burmah and Cochin-China is a snake which has, in the female sex, a face like a pretty girl, with two feet growing under the neck, each with five fingers, exactly like the fingers of a human hand. The male is green in color, and has a long beard; it will kill a tiger, but a fox is more than a match for it. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. AFTER VICTOR HUGO. You said, "I love you." Prodigal of sighs, You said it o'er and o'er; I nothing said. The lake lies still beneath the moonlit skies The water sleeps when stars shine overhead. For this you blame me- - but love is not less Because its whisper is too faint to hear. The sudden, sweet alarm of happiness Set seal upon my lips when you were near. It had been best had you said less - I more: Love's first steps falter and he folds his wings. On empty nests the garish sun-rays pour Deep shadows fall around the brightest things. To-day (how sadly in the chestnut-tree The faint leaves flutter and the cold wind sighs!) To-day you leave me, for you could not see So be it, then; we part; the sun has set. Perhaps to-morrow, whilst my cheek is wet, The sweet "I love you!" that must now go by From The Contemporary Review. A REVELATION AND A PROPHECY. I. every way the pope made all men underIstand that the iron had entered into his soul. He spent the whole day in his private chapel, prostrate before the blessed sacrament exposed on the altar, praying in the midst of the assembled prelates of his court for an expiation of the blasphemies of Campo di Fiore. From Saturday till Wednesday morning no one was allowed to enter the Vatican but the ambas holy see. It was to him as if the abomination of desolation had been set up in the holy of holies, and the unveiling of a statue to the heresiarch was proclaimed to be the outward and visible sign of the determination of the triumphant Revolution to press forward to the "overthrow of the sacred authority of the pontiffs and the extirpation of the Christian faith." ON the centenary of the fall of the Bastille the Parisian mob looted the Café Imolfi, in the Rue Royale. The proprietor had omitted to decorate his premises, a pleasant resort, famous for its ices, and, being angrily ordered to display some bun-sadors of foreign powers accredited to the ting, unluckily so far forgot himself as to hoist the Italian flag. "The red fool fury of the Seine" blazed up instantly. In the twinkling of an eye the café and its contents were flung into the gutter, and its unlucky proprietor fled for his life to the protection of the police. It was a significant little incident, noted largely throughout Europe, but in no place more curiously than in the Eternal City, where at any moment the pent-up forces which demolished the Café Imolfi might break out into fierce collision and result in catastrophe. But in Rome the balance of force in the opposing elements is reversed. The Quirinal, which flaunts the Italian national flag before the gates of the Vatican, represents the material force of a united nation, while the pope in his palace-prison is as powerless as was the café proprietor of the Rue Royale when the mob kicked his furniture into the street. Should a collision come, his only thought must be of flight. If the pope could have asserted his authority by the arm of the flesh, he would have done so, in order to avert-or, if that were impossible, to avenge the ceremony in honor of Giordano Bruno, which had taken place six weeks before. No incident of late years has so deeply wounded the sentiments of the rulers of the Church as the unveiling of the Bruno monument on June 9. The Inquisition had burned Bruno in 1600, and, although the Church might have ignored the tribute paid to his memory, that was not the spirit in which the Bruno celebration was treated by the Vatican. The Pentecostal festival was clouded by a gloom that could be felt. The whole Church was invited to share in the indignation with which its head regarded the sacrilege of the commemoration, and in The Sacred College of Cardinals was summoned to a most secret and extraordi nary consistory, in a form and under precautions which had only twice been adopted in the long reign of Pius the Ninth. At this consistory Leo the Thirteenth communicated to his cardinals the grave decision at which he had arrived. The solemn allocution which he addressed to them, and which was subsequently published to the world, amounted practically to a pontifical declaration that Rome was no longer a safe or tenable residence for the successor of St. Peter. The freedom of the apostolic functions and the dignity of the pontifical office, already impaired from of old by the usurpation of the Revolution, were now menaced with extinction by the growing insolence of the sects of evil. The daring of desperate men, unchained to every crime, driven on by the fierceness of lawless desires, could no longer be restrained; the city that was once the safe and inviolable seat of the holy see was now the capital of a new impiety, where absurd and impudent worship was paid to human reason. is rendered evident in what condition is placed the supreme head of the Church, the pastor and the teacher of the Catholic world." The other communications addressed by the pope to the princes of the Church at this most secret consistory have not yet been divulged; but it is believed Hereby that the pope was able to report a most | rious kinds of power. Alexander the Third Whatever consolation these assurances may have given to the cardinals, must have been damped by the announcement that the new Penal Code, which empowers the courts to consign to prison any priest whose discourses are objected to by the civil authorities, had received the royal assent that very day. The struggle between the Church and the State, it was recognized, had entered upon a new and probably a decisive campaign, and the pope, as generalissimo of the forces of the Church, began by preparing for what may at any moment become an inevitable retreat. It is understood that should war break out between France and Italy, or should the quarrel between the Quirinal with its Penal Code and the Vatican with its clergy result in open conflict, the pope will leave Rome and seek refuge on the Balearic Islands. From that retreat, sheltered by the Spanish flag and secured from interference by the fleets of Europe, the Holy Father will carry on the government of the Church until such time as the restoration of peace shall enable him to return to re-establish the sovereignty of the holy see in the city of the Cæsars. II. IN Europe there are at this moment but three men who stand out above their fellows as the supreme representatives of va The pope, thus excluded from the healthy human life of the family, clings all the more passionately to the local sur 20 30 |