e force of habit, I dipped my hand over the boat's
gunwale, with the hope of cooling my blistered palm in the salt water.
Judge of my surprise, when I found my hand immersed in _thick black
mud_.

"By Jove, fellows," cried I, "we're floored!"

There was no mistaking the fact; we were aground. At that instant the
moon burst out from between the drifting clouds, and, as if in
derision, threw a streak of light over our melancholy position. There
we were, high and dry on a bank of mud, a scooped furrow on each side
of us attesting the frantic efforts of our oarsmen to get a headway,
and a long wake, ten feet in extent, marking our distance from the sea
behind us. Such was our position as the moon revealed it to us. We
looked dolefully in one another's faces for three minutes; then a grim
smile gradually stole over Tom's expressive countenance, as he slowly
ejaculated, "Point Shirley it is!" when the ludicrous side of the
matter seemed to occur to each of us simultaneously, and we indulged
ourselves with a roar of laughter,--the first since we had left
Nahant.

Of course, nothing could be done under the circumstances; but we must
wait patiently for the rising of the tide to float us off. So we sat
there in our wet garments until the dead of night, when our boat
gradually lifted herself off and we started again, and finally arrived
at Braman's early in the morning.

The moral of this tale may be summed up in a single word,--TEMPERANCE.

FROM THE PAPERS OF REGINALD RATCLIFFE, ESQ.

In college I was the "Illustrious Lazy." In my professional studies
and avocations, I have been so hard driven, in order to make up for
four idle years, that I am wasted almost to a shadow, and fears are
entertained that I shall wholly vanish into thin air. My physician
talks gravely about my having exhausted my nervous energy, and sends
me to Ratborough, as the place of all others the most favorable for
entire intellectual repose. I am living with an old aunt, Tabitha
Flint, who was wont to rock me, and trot me, and wash my face, in my
helpless infancy, and can hardly yet be convinced that I have outgrown
such endearing assiduities in the twenty-five years that have
intervened. I let her pet me, so far as I find it convenient, and,
indeed, farther, because I feel grateful for the kind feelings of
which I am the object.

There is another personage in the household, who probably thinks that
in the exuberant kindness of my aunt I have