quite as
bad as we've had in six days; and some of them are a little over ten
thousand tons, I believe. Now, I've seen the 'Majestic,' for instance,
ducked from her bows to her funnel, and I've helped the 'Arizona,' I
think she was, to back off an iceberg she met with one dark night; and
I had to run out of the 'Paris's' engine room one day because there
was thirty foot of water in it. Of course, I don't deny--" The steam
shut off suddenly as a tugboat, loaded with a political club and a
brass band that had been to see a senator off to Europe, crossed the
bows, going to Hoboken. There was a long silence, that reached without
a break from the cut-water to the propeller blades of the "Dimbula."

Then one big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had
just waked up: "It's my conviction that I have made a fool of myself."

The steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds
herself, all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into
one deep voice, which is the soul of the ship.

"Who are you?" he said, with a laugh.

"I am the 'Dimbula,' of course. I've never been anything else except
that--and a fool."

The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away
just in time, and its band was playing clashily and brassily a popular
but impolite air:

In the days of old Rameses--are you on?
In the days of old Rameses--are you on?
In the days of old Rameses,
That story had paresis--
Are you on--are you on--are you on?

"Well, I'm glad you've found yourself," said the steam. "To tell the
truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs of stringers.
Here's quarantine. After that we'll go to our wharf and clean up a
little, and next month we'll do it all over again."

A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

NOTES DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL.--GOYA AND HIS CAREER.--FOUR ENGLISH
PAINTERS OF FAMILIAR LIFE.--GERICAULT, INGRES, AND DELACROIX.

BY WILL H. LOW.

Looking backward to the first quarter of this century, it is hardly
too sweeping an assertion to say that, with a single exception, there
was little that was important in the way of painting outside of France
and England. There were local reputations in all the other countries,
practitioners of the art who joined to a respectable proficiency in
painting an adhesion to the traditions which had been handed down to
them. These men, in their time and place, were notable; and in
the museums of their respective count