I
couldn't feel I was keeping her properly under my eye till I married
her, last June month."

"You was always one to over-do things," said my grandfather.

"But if you was alive an' well, why didn' you drop us a line?"

Now when it came to talk about "dropping a line" my grandfather
fairly lost his temper. So he struck William John Dunn on the nose--
a thing he had never been known to do before--and William John Dunn
hit him back, and the neighbours had to separate them. And next day,
William John Dunn took out a summons against him.

Well, the case was tried before the magistrates: and my grandfather
told his story from the beginning, quite straightforward, just as
I've told it to you. And the magistrates decided that, taking one
thing with another, he'd had a great deal of provocation, and fined
him five shillings. And there the matter ended. But now you know
the reason why I'm William John Dunn's grandson instead of Hendry
Watty's.

JETSOM.

Where Gerennius' beacon stands
High above Pendower sands;
Where, about the windy Nare,
Foxes breed and falcons pair;
Where the gannet dries a wing
Wet with fishy harvesting,
And the cormorants resort,
Flapping slowly from their sport
With the fat Atlantic shoal,
Homeward to Tregeagle's Hole--
Walking there, the other day,
In a bight within a bay,
I espied amid the rocks,
Bruis'd and jamm'd, the daintiest box,
That the waves had flung and left
High upon an ivied cleft.
Striped it was with white and red,
Satin-lined and carpeted,
Hung with bells, and shaped withal
Like the queer, fantastical
Chinese temples you'll have seen
Pictured upon white Nankin,
Where, assembled in effective
Head-dresses and odd perspective,
Tiny dames and mandarins
Expiate their egg-shell sins
By reclining on their drumsticks,
Waving fans and burning gum-sticks.
Land of poppy and pekoe!
Could thy sacred artists know--
Could they distantly conjecture
How we use their architecture,
Ousting the indignant Joss
For a pampered Flirt or Floss,
Poodle, Blenheim, Skye, Maltese,
Lapped in purple and proud ease--
They might read their god's reproof
Here on blister'd wall and roof;
Scaling lacquer, dinted bells,
Floor befoul'd of weed and shells,
Where, as erst the tabid Curse