romp and play
In the new-born freedom of "school let out."

Such scaring of doves from their cozy nests,
Such hunting for eggs in the lofts so high,
Till the frightened hens, with a cackle shrill,
From their hidden treasures are fain to fly.

Oh, the dear old barn, so cool, so wide!
Its doors will open again ere long
To the summer sunshine, the new-mown hay,
And the merry ring of vacation song.

For grandpa's barn is the jolliest place
For frolic and fun on a summer's day;
And e'en old Time, as the years slip by,
Its memory never can steal away.

[Begun in No. 19 of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, March 9.]

ACROSS THE OCEAN; OR, A BOY'S FIRST VOYAGE.

A True Story.

BY J. O. DAVIDSON.

CHAPTER IX.

ASHORE AT MALTA.

Sailors have a proverb that Valetta Harbor is like a hen-coop--"no
gittin' out when you're in, and no gittin' in when you're out." So
thought Frank, as the steamer glided into a narrow channel between the
two enormous forts of the outer harbor, through the embrasures of which
scores of heavy cannon, high up over the mast-heads of the _Arizona_,
looked grimly down. Other forts, almost equally huge and formidable,
guarded the entrance to the inner harbor, which was so narrow that the
three English iron-clads anchored within almost blocked it up, and it
was a puzzling question how the _Arizona_ was to pass them.

"We're bound to have a smash _now_," muttered Herrick, "unless that
lubber of a pilot's kind 'nuff to fall overboard."

The poor Maltese speedily justified this bitter verdict. Two of the
vessels were passed safely, but as they neared the third the pilot got
flurried, and gave a wrong order. The next moment the _Arizona_ came
smash into the counter of the iron-clad, sweeping away the miniature
flower garden which her captain had arranged along the stern gallery,
overturning several guns, and, as Jack Dewey poetically phrased it,
"playin' thunder and pitchforks generally."

[Illustration: MALTA.

1. THE GRAND HARBOR.
2. AGOZO (MALTESE) BOAT.
3. LANDING-PLACE.
4. THE COLLISION.
5. STREET IN MALTA.]

Instantly the English boatswain's shrill pipe was heard, and a crowd of
sturdy fellows in clean "whites" and bare feet came racing aft, and
cleared away the wreck in a twinkling, not without a few rough-hewn
jokes at "Yankee seamanship," which the _Arizona's_ men repaid with
interest.

"Just as well you've got no navy, if _that's_ how you han