charest, the half-oriental capital of
Wallachia, at the farther end of Europe:

M. Martens, says the Bucharest _Chronicle,_ lived with his family near
a house wherein broke out a fire at one o'clock in the morning.
Half-dressed, he ran out to help his neighbors, and found a woman crying
wildly, "My children!"

"How many have you got?" he said.

"Three."

"Which room?"

"Up stairs, third story."

"Why, that's where the fire broke out!" cried Martens, and went up the
staircase in a hurry. In a few minutes he came down with his arms full.

"There they are," said he; "but there's only two."

"Merciful Heaven! I forgot to tell you that the other was in the back
room."

"Well,--yes; you might have mentioned that before. You see the timbers
are falling, and--I've got three children myself. However"---

Up he went again, four steps at a time. Pretty soon he came back, a
blackamoor with smoke; but he had the baby safe and sound, and gave it
to its mother. Next day when he came to sing at the Muller Gardens, the
audience glorified him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NOT A SEA-SERPENT.

That there really is a sea-serpent, scientific men now have little
doubt; but many people have not seen it who thought they did. One
curious deception of this sort is thus related by an English writer:

One morning in October, 1869, I was standing with a group of passengers
on the deck of time ill-fated P. and G. steamship _Rangoon,_ then
steaming up the Straits of Malacca to Singapore.

One of the party suddenly pointed out an object on the port-bow, perhaps
half a mile off, and drew from us the simultaneous exclamation of "The
sea-serpent!"

And there it was, to the naked eye a genuine serpent, speeding through
the sea, with its head raised on a slender curved neck, now almost
buried in the water, and anon reared just above its surface. There was
the mane, and there were the well-known undulating coils stretching
yards behind.

But for an opera-glass, probably all our party on board the _Rangoon_
would have been personal witnesses to the existence of a great
sea-serpent. But, alas for romance! One glance through the lenses, and
the reptile was resolved into a bamboo, root upwards, anchored in some
manner to the bottom,--a "snag," in fact.

Swayed up and down by the rapid current, a series of waves undulated
beyond it, bearing on their crests dark-colored weeds of grass that had
been caught b