Among the grates we grub;
Still, still, with vim and vigour,
'Tis ours to scour and scrub.

CURTAIN.

* * * * *

A TALE OF A COINCIDENCE.

"Coincidences," said the ordinary seaman, "are rum things. Now I can tell
you of a rum un that happened to me."

It said Royal Naval Reserve round his cap, but he looked as if he ought to
be wearing gold earrings and a gaudy handkerchief.

"When I was a young feller I made a voyage or two in an old hooker called
the _Pearl of Asia_. Her old man at that time was old Captain Gillson, him
that had the gold tooth an' the swell ma'ogany fist in place o' the one
that got blowed off by a rocket in Falmouth Roads. Well, I was walkin' out
with a young woman at Liverpool--nice young thing--an' she give me a ring
to keep to remember 'er by, the day before we sailed. Nice thing it was; it
had 'Mizpah' wrote on it.

"We 'ad two or three fellers in the crowd for'ard that voyage as would
'andle anything as wasn't too 'ot or too 'eavy which explains why I got
into a 'abit of slippin' my bits o' vallybles, such as joolery, into a bit
of a cache I found all nice and 'andy in the planking' back o' my bunk.

"We 'ad a long passage of it 'ome, a 'undred-and-sixty days from Portland,