ut have no chance. I wish you would write to a fellow, Cynth. I
would like to see you pretty awfully much. How you did give it to
me that day on the river! You were a brick, though, to come. I
have not forgotten what you said. I am going to show you I am no
coward, though you said I was. I'll stick at the lumber trade
until I die in the harness, and here's my hand and seal!

"Yours,
"NEAL GORDON.

"P.S.--Give my love to Hessie. I hope Edith is coming round all
right."

It was better than nothing, though Mrs. Franklin wished that the letter
had been to her. Still, it was far, far better than if it had not been
written at all. And then he had sent his love to her. It was in a
postscript, and was probably an after-thought, but she was glad he did
it. He seemed well and moderately happy, and for that his sister was
very grateful. Fortunately Hester could not read between the lines, and
learn that the boy was eating his heart out with homesickness and a
longing to see his only sister.

Neal found this quiet life, so far from his family and friends, very
different from that to which he had been accustomed, and sometimes it
seemed very dreary and hard to bear. Then, again, he was quite unused to
steady occupation, and his cousin demanded unflagging attention to
business. It was good for the boy, just what he needed; but that made it
none the less irksome.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

WATER LIFE AROUND NEW YORK.

BY JULIAN RALPH.

What an odd thing a boatman's dream of the water life around New York
would be if all the vessels and craft of every kind should take to
themselves grotesque shapes and characters, as familiar objects are apt
to do in human dreams! We have had some great and notable water parades
in our harbor--the last and greatest being that queer hooting and
tooting procession of many kinds of craft that swept around the
war-ships of ten or a dozen great nations at our Columbus celebration in
the early summer of 1893. But the boatman's dream of which I was
thinking would be far stranger than that, because the Columbian naval
review included only the handy, easily manageable steam-craft of New
York, like the steamships and steamboats and tugs and tow-boats. It left
out all the really queer floating things that have such shapes as to
almost turn a dream into a nightmare.

The dreaming boatman of whom I am thinking would see great
water-giraffes, which would really b