an' a proper tratement for a man who has behaved as me?'

'Well, any'ow,' said Ortheris,'tweren't this 'ere Colonel's daughter,
an' you _was_ blazin' copped when you tried to wash in the Fort Ditch.'

'That,' said Mulvaney, finishing the champagne, 'is a shuparfluous an'
impert'nint observation.'




OF THOSE CALLED

[Footnote: 1895]

We were wallowing through the China Seas in a dense fog, the horn
blowing every two minutes for the benefit of the fishery craft that
crowded the waterways. From the bridge the fo'c'sle was invisible;
from the hand-wheel at the stern the captain's cabin. The fog held
possession of everything--the pearly white fog. Once or twice when it
tried to lift, we saw a glimpse of the oily sea, the flitting vision
of a junk's sail spread in the vain hope of catching the breeze, or
the buoys of a line of nets. Somewhere close to us lay the land, but
it might have been the Kurile Islands for aught we knew. Very early
in the morning there passed us, not a cable's-length away, but as
unseen as the spirits of the dead, a steamer of the same line as ours.
She howled melodiously in answer to our bellowing, and passed on.

'Suppose she had hit us,' said a man from Saigon. 'Then we should have
gone down,' answered the chief officer sweetly. 'Beastly thing to