h in the morning papers two days ago
from San Francisco, saying that all the eastern-bound vessels were
overdue on that coast?"

I replied at once that I had not noticed it.

"It is astonishing," he said, "that in our present system of journalism
the most important events connected with the welfare of mankind receive
the slightest attention from the newspapers, and the trivialities of
life are most voluminously treated. A movement in the iron trade that
affects millions of homes gets a brief paragraph in small type, and the
quarrel of a ballet girl with her paramour receives illuminated
attention down whole columns. Here is something taking place in the
Pacific Ocean of surpassing interest to the race, and nobody pays the
slightest attention to it except, perhaps, the consignees and shipping
clerks."

"What is it?" we both asked, with the languid interest that young
people, having an overmastering personal affair on hand, would be apt to
take in matters of national or universal importance.

The Judge got up, and going to a side table, where he kept his papers
piled in chronological order, pulled out a recent issue of a morning
journal, and after looking it over searchingly a moment, said:

"Here. I should think you would notice such a paragraph as this." Then
he read, as I recollect, a telegraphic dispatch to this effect:

"SAN FRANCISCO, June 23.--Considerable anxiety is felt here in
commercial circles by the non-arrival of any eastward-bound vessels
for a week. The steamship _Cathay_ of the Occidental Line is
overdue four days. An unusual easterly wind has been blowing for
twenty-four hours. Weather mild.

"That dispatch, you will perceive," said the Judge, "was sent two days
ago. Now here, on the 25th, I read in the evening paper another dispatch
from San Francisco, hidden away at the bottom of a column of commercial
news. Listen to this:

"SAN FRANCISCO, June 25.--The entire suspension of travel from the
West continues to excite the gravest apprehensions. Nothing but
coastwise vessels have come in during the past eight days. The U.
S. cruiser _Mobile_ left Honolulu three weeks ago for this coast.
There is no official intimation of a storm in the Chinese seas."

The Judge laid the paper down, and regarded us both a moment in silence,
as if expecting to hear some remark that indicated our suddenly awakened
curiosity.

I don't think we responded with any ade