eg. Then all in one welded commotion, came an invisible push from
astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail
collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by;
something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole
crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the
white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all
blended together and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.

Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round
it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale,
tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the
water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes,
the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom
of the ocean.

* * * * *

=_Josiah Gilbert Holland, 1819-._=

From The Bay Path.

=_310._= THE WEDDING-PRESENT.

John Woodcock was the first to break the silence. Rising from his seat,
and making his way out of the crowd around him, he crossed the room to
where his daughter was standing absorbed in, and half bewildered by the
scene, and whispering a few words in her ear, took her by the hand, and
led her before the married pair. Mary extended her hand to him instantly
and cordially, and exclaimed, "I knew that you would come to me and
congratulate me."

"That wan't my arrant any way," said Woodcock bluntly, "and I shouldn't
begin with you if it was."

"Why John! I am astonished!" exclaimed the bride; "I thought you was one
of the best friends I had in the world."

But Mary was somewhat affected with Woodcock's seriousness, and, with no
reply to Holyoke, beyond a smile, she asked Woodcock's reasons for the
statement he had made.

"I didn't come up here to talk about this, and p'raps it ain't the right
time to do it, but there's no use backin' down when you begin. I've got
a consait that men and women ain't built out of the same kind of timber.
Look at my hand--a great pile o' bones covered with brown luther, with
the hair on,--and then look at yourn. White oak ain't bass, is it? Every
man's hand ain't so black as mine, and every woman's ain't so white as
yourn, but there's always difference enough to show, and there's just as
much odds in their doin's and dispositions as there is in their hands. I
know what women be. I've wintered and summered with 'em