ers."

And amidst shouts of laughter and applause Mr. Manners limped forward
from a group of stockholders, while the Colonel heartily shook his young
guide by the hand. And behind Manners there loomed up in the doorway of
the shops a goodly stack of luscious fruit and boxes of cigars, and it
was evident the company meant to royally entertain its defenders.

And Mr. Manners was understood to express himself substantially as
follows:

"Gentleman of Company L. If these works had been destroyed last night
half a million dollars would have gone up in smoke. We couldn't get
insurance for more than quarter of its value. You saved it. Never until
last night did I know, or my associates, these gentlemen, what it meant
to have a National Guard. We thought it was the same thing as the
militia we used to join and have fun with forty years ago when we were
young, and so had determined to have no more of it in our business.
We've learned we didn't know the first thing about it. We're clean
converted. We find that young men nowadays are doing better by
themselves, their State, and their country than we did. Now I've got a
boy at home--a good boy, if I do say it--who wanted to join you three
months ago, and I wouldn't let him, and I'm going home this day to beg
his pardon, as I beg yours, and tell him I'll be a proud father if he
can wear the uniform in the same company with you and Wallace and
Sercombe. You've made Wallace a sergeant. Well, the Amity Works will
stand by what they've done, too. They discharged Mr. Wallace from what
we'll call a second-class clerkship yesterday afternoon, and they now
fill the vacancy by the promotion thereto of his friend Sercombe from
the shops. They have established another first-class clerkship, and to
fill that original vacancy they name Sergeant Fred Wallace, of Company
L, and we'll drink his health in the best and coolest lemonade to be had
in the whole State."

"Well," said old Wallace, as he sat later in the day with the mother's
hand in his, "I didn't take much stock in that soldier business either.
But where would we all have been this day but for Fred--Fred and his
regiment?"

THE END.

HINTS OF A RACING CAT-BOAT AND ITS CARE.

The popular idea that a racing cat-boat is an expensive luxury has
doubtless arisen from the cost entailed upon those who keep a racing
boat, and either cannot or will not themselves attend to the labor
connected with keeping such a craft in the best