five-minute fuse will be long enough, and it must be so placed that when
it has burned its time the parachute will fall from the balloon. The
long ends below must be tied to a curtain ring, from which the little
basket hangs, with the kitten securely fastened in it by a piece of
cloth pierced with four holes for the four legs. This can be brought up
over the kitten's back and tied to the sides of the basket. In this way
the kitten is in neither danger nor discomfort. The boys must be careful
to make this plain to mothers and sisters, or their experiments may be
stopped by family orders. I'll guarantee one thing, though, if they
carry out these instructions carefully, your boy friends will have a
fine time."

I certainly hope they will.

THE PILOT

I

SOME STIRRING TALES OF THE SEA HEARD AT THE PILOTS' CLUB

OF all the clubs in New York, I know none where a man who values the
real things of life may spend a pleasanter hour than at the Pilots'
Club, far down on the lower water-front, looking out of lofty windows in
one of those great structures that make the city, seen from the bay, a
place of wonderful fairy towers.

Here on the walls are pictures that call up thrilling scenes, as this
painting of pilot-boat No. 11 (they call her _The Phantom_), rescuing
passengers from the _Oregon_, helpless in the great storm of 1886, sixty
miles beyond Sandy Hook. We shall find men sitting about these rooms,
smoking and reading, who can tell the story of that night in simple,
rugged words that will make the water devils dance before us.

Look at them! These are the pilots of New York, greatest seaport in the
world, with its tidy annual total of twenty-odd millions in tonnage
entered and cleared, against fifteen millions for London. These are the
boys (some of them nearing seventy) who bring the mighty liners in and
take them out, who fight through any sea at a vessel's blue-light
bidding, and climb her fortress sides by a slamming whip-lash ladder
that shames the flying trapeze. And this in trim derby hat (sometimes a
topper), with gloves and smart necktie, and some New-York "Heralds"
tucked away in a coat-tail pocket.

Look at them! These are the boys who stay out when every other floating
thing comes in, who face an Arctic rigor when masts are barrel big with
ice, and ropes like trees, and when climbing to a steamer's deck is like
skating up an iceberg. These are the boys who know, through fog and
darkness,