little brown boy was seen to dart from his obscure recess, and pass rapidly across the forms, while his companions eagerly made way for him, clapping their hands as in anticipation of some brilliant achievement.  In an instant, the boy stood before the master, his dark eye full of anxious expression, but quite devoid of doubt or anxiety.  All our attention was at once directed to the half-clothed, barefooted child, to whom the questions were now put, and by whom they were answered with a promptitude and precision most wonderful.  And who, what was he, that little brown boy?  Some did not care to ask, and others said:  ’Who would have thought that that little beggar-boy would have been so smart!’ But God has chosen the vile things (to man) of this earth to become a bright and shining light to the world.  We asked who that little boy was, and the master smiled, shook his head, and said:  ’Oh, I scarcely know myself:  it is a little boy the police have sent us in lately from the streets.  It is not above three weeks since he came, but he is a good and very clever child—­very desirous to learn, and never forgets anything!’

I was affected by this trivial circumstance, reflecting how many little brown boys like this there must be in various countries called civilised, who, for want of a refuge where love and light are predominant, remain the outcasts of the streets, and become the prey of vice and ignorance.

THE LOSING GAME.

[The following story is by no means a piece of mere invention.  The principal points were narrated to me by a very intelligent young North-Sea fisherman, who had frequently heard the legend from a grizzled old sailor on board the smack in which he was an apprentice.  The veteran used to tell the story as having happened to himself; and he had told it so often, that he firmly believed it, and used to get into a passion when any of the crew dared to doubt or laugh.  I have, of course, licked the rough outlines of the story or anecdote into something like shape; but the main incidents are repeated to this day by the sailors of the ‘Barking Fleet,’ as the squadron of handsome smacks are called, which, hailing from the town of Barking, in Essex, pursue the toilsome task, in all seasons, and almost in all weathers, of supplying the London market with North-Sea turbot, soles, and cod.  The story is told in the first person, as Dick Hatch himself might have narrated it.]

Nigh forty years ago, mates, when I was as young and supple as the boy Bill, there—­though I was older than him by some years—­I was serving my apprenticeship to the trade aboard the sloop Lively Nan.  There were not such big vessels in the trade then, mates, as now; but they were tight craft, and manned by light fellows; and they did their work as well as the primest clipper of the Barking Fleet.  Well, the Lively Nan was about this quickest and most weatherly of the whole fleet; and she had