The Youth's Companion Part 8

Should the duplicates be issued, they will have to be deposited in trust with the United States Treasurer in order to secure the Government against loss.

When those particular bonds are called for redemption the amount will be paid the owner, and in the meantime he can regularly draw the interest.

A n.o.bLE-HEARTED RESCUER.

A French paper in New York, the _Courier des Etats-Unis,_ published the following instance of brave self-sacrifice by a Belgian comic singer named Martens, who at one time was in this country, and gave entertainments in the "Empire City." The scene in which he figures here as the hero is laid in Bucharest, the half-oriental capital of Wallachia, at the farther end of Europe:

M. Martens, says the Bucharest _Chronicle,_ lived with his family near a house wherein broke out a fire at one o'clock in the morning.

Half-dressed, he ran out to help his neighbors, and found a woman crying wildly, "My children!"

"How many have you got?" he said.

"Three."

"Which room?"

"Up stairs, third story."

"Why, that's where the fire broke out!" cried Martens, and went up the staircase in a hurry. In a few minutes he came down with his arms full.

"There they are," said he; "but there's only two."

"Merciful Heaven! I forgot to tell you that the other was in the back room."

"Well,--yes; you might have mentioned that before. You see the timbers are falling, and--I've got three children myself. However"---

Up he went again, four steps at a time. Pretty soon he came back, a blackamoor with smoke; but he had the baby safe and sound, and gave it to its mother. Next day when he came to sing at the Muller Gardens, the audience glorified him.

NOT A SEA-SERPENT.

That there really is a sea-serpent, scientific men now have little doubt; but many people have not seen it who thought they did. One curious deception of this sort is thus related by an English writer:

One morning in October, 1869, I was standing with a group of pa.s.sengers on the deck of time ill-fated P. and G. steams.h.i.+p _Rangoon,_ then steaming up the Straits of Malacca to Singapore.

One of the party suddenly pointed out an object on the port-bow, perhaps half a mile off, and drew from us the simultaneous exclamation of "The sea-serpent!"

And there it was, to the naked eye a genuine serpent, speeding through the sea, with its head raised on a slender curved neck, now almost buried in the water, and anon reared just above its surface. There was the mane, and there were the well-known undulating coils stretching yards behind.

But for an opera-gla.s.s, probably all our party on board the _Rangoon_ would have been personal witnesses to the existence of a great sea-serpent. But, alas for romance! One glance through the lenses, and the reptile was resolved into a bamboo, root upwards, anch.o.r.ed in some manner to the bottom,--a "snag," in fact.

Swayed up and down by the rapid current, a series of waves undulated beyond it, bearing on their crests dark-colored weeds of gra.s.s that had been caught by the bamboo stem.

PUNISHED BY CONSCIENCE.--A writer in the Boston _Transcript_ calls attention to the fact that a man may escape the law, and yet be held by his conscience. He says:

Many years ago, a young man in this city was guilty of an offence against the law, an offence which brought social ruin upon himself and his family. The span and his offence are forgotten by the public, yet he lives, and lives here in Boston. But from the day his offence was discovered,--although, having escaped the law, he is free to come and go as he pleases,--he has never been seen outside of his own home in the daytime.

Sometimes, under the cover of night, he walks abroad to take an airing and note the changes that thirty years have wrought, but an ever-active conscience makes him shun the light of day and the faces of men, and he walks apart, a stranger in the midst of those among whom he has always lived.

NO QUOTATION MARKS.

A writer in the Boston _Transcript_ notices the fact that even men eminent in literature are not above borrowing from each other, and sometimes display the borrowed article as their own:

When Tennyson's "In Memoriam" appeared, a certain poet was standing in the Old Corner Bookstore, turning over the leaves of the freshly-printed volume, when up stepped a literary friend, of rare taste and learning in poetry, saying to the poet,---

"Have you read it?"

"Indeed I have!" was the answer; "and do you know it seems to me that, in this delightful book, Tennyson has done for friends.h.i.+p what Petrarch did for love."

This was too neat a _mot_ for the literary friend to forget. That afternoon, he called upon a lady on Beacon Hill, and noticing a copy of "In Memoriam" on her table, saw his opportunity.

After the usual greetings, he took up the book. "Have you read it?" he asked.

"Yes," said the lady, "and I have enjoyed it greatly."

"So have I," said her visitor, "and do you know that it seems to me that in this charming poem Tennyson has done for friends.h.i.+p what Petrarch did for love."

"Indeed," rejoined the lady, adding, with a mischievous smile, "Mr.

------" (naming a well-known essayist and critic) "called this morning, _and said the same thing_."

Who it was that originated the apt comparison remains an unsolved mystery to this day.

A DOG AND A STRING.

The Paris _Figaro_ reports a conversation between an optician and a customer of an inquiring mind:

A near-sighted friend went to an optician the other day to change the gla.s.ses of his spectacles, which had become too weak. He was given the next number lower.

"After this number, what will I take?" he asked.

"These."

"And after that?"