hat a mistake had been
committed by the officials, who had sent on to Toulon the coffin
containing his mother-in-law's body, believing that it held the remains
of a deceased admiral, which was to be embarked for interment in Algeria,
while the coffin awaiting delivery was the one which should have been
sent on. The gentleman who was placed in this awkward predicament,
having requested the railway officials to communicate at once with Toulon
by telegraph, proceeded thither himself with the coffin of the admiral,
but the intimation had arrived too late. He ascertained when he got
there that the first coffin had been duly received, taken on board, amid
"the thunder of fort and of fleet," the state vessel which was waiting
for it, and despatched to Algeria. He at once called upon the maritime
prefect of Toulon, and explained the circumstances of the case, but
though a despatch-boat was sent in pursuit, the other vessel was not
overtaken. He is now at Toulon awaiting her return, and I believe that
he declines to give up the coffin containing the deceased admiral until
he regains possession of his mother-in-law's remains.

A CURIOUS RACE.

In July, 1877, a carrier-pigeon tried conclusions with a railway train.
The bird was a Belgian voyageur, bred at Woolwich, and "homed" to a house
in Cannon Street, City. The train was the Continental mail-express timed
not to stop between Dover and Cannon Street Station. The pigeon,
conveying an urgent message from the French police, was tossed through
the railway carriage window as the train moved from the Admiralty Pier,
the wind being west, the atmosphere hazy, but the sun shining. For more
than a minute the bird circled round till it attained an altitude of
about half-a-mile, and then it sailed away Londonwards. By this time the
engine had got full steam on, and the train was tearing away at the rate
of sixty miles an hour; but the carrier was more than a match for it.
Taking a line midway between Maidstone and Sittingbourne, it reached home
twenty minutes before the express dashed into the station; the train
having accomplished seventy-six-and-a-half miles to the pigeon's seventy,
but being badly beaten for all that.

--_All the Year Round_.

A GREENLANDER'S FIRST RAILWAY RIDE.

Hans Hendrik, a native of Greenland, thus describes his first journey by
rail in America:--"Then our train arrived and we took seat