search of his game. His tormentors stood | in duty bound, but somehow the victim on the shore and directed his movements, of the fish trick never laughs as heartily and they kept him working at the oars for as do his companions. Sometimes the half an hour. Then they called him back sold party inclines to anger, but it is far again, and set him to shooting more phos- better for him to put a smiling face on phorescence; and they encouraged the the matter, and watch for a chance to resport by going with him in the boat, and venge himself on some one else. pretending to take in his prizes. The two The South-side Club is open the entire ducks were gathered several times, till he year. During two months-March and had some ten or twelve, and proceeded to April-when the trouting season is open, open a basket of Champagne in joy over for none but members and masculine his good luck. He made arrangements guests, but for the rest of the year memfor carrying his birds to the city next day bers are privileged to be accompanied by for distribution among his friends; but it their families, under certain carefully was given out that the ducks were stolen drawn restrictions. The Olympic is open in the night, and he did not know the during the summer months only; and trick that had been played on him until while the buildings and grounds are freedays afterward. ly subject to the inspection of ladies at any hour between dawn and sunset, the rules do not permit the residence of the fair sex within the Olympian limits.

Another green South-Sider was sent in pursuit of birds as remarkable as anything in the mythology of the ancients: they were provided with four wings and two heads, and possessed the wonderful power of whistling through one bill while they sang through the other. They inhabited a marsh about a mile east of the club-house, and were only to be taken at daybreak. The ambitious hunter rose early, and went breakfastless to the field indicated. He waited till long after sunrise, but saw no sign of the curious production of ornithology, and he went there three days in succession, only to be disappointed. Finally, on the fourth morning he discovered a bird answering to the description, and after creeping through the wet grass, and nearly getting mired in a bog, he fired, and brought down a clever composition of wood and pasteboard. Subsequent references to the "ballyhoo bird" were never relished by the victim of the practical joke.

We are told in history that when Cleopatra and Mark Antony were one day on a fishing excursion the sport was enlivened by the employment of divers, who surreptitiously attached dead fish to the hooks of the fishers. The trick has come down to our day, and nowhere is it played with greater effect than on Great South Bay. Even the old stagers are sometimes taken in, and I have recollection of a veteran who had passed many summers on the south shore, who one day threw himself into a whirl of excitement while hauling in a six-pound lead that had been attached to his line while his back was turned. He was happier while hauling than when he gathered in his prize and contemplated its figure. He laughed, as

Across the bay from the Olympic is the Wa-Wa-Yanda Club, which is also a bachelor establishment, and has its doors hermetically closed during the winter. Like Little Buttercup in the days of her baby-farming-hood, the WaWa-Yanda is young and charming, as it is only an infant in age, and has a delightful situation not far from the entrance of the bay. The Wa-Wa-Yandans fish, hunt, and sail for amusement and health, and the half-dozen boats belonging to the club are kept pretty busy in the fair days of summer. The members boast of cool breezes when New York is mopping its forehead in agony, and they also boast of a cat which is a most remarkable feline production. He is thus described by one of his intimate friends:

Tom isn't a bit afraid of the water, like every other cat I ever heard of. He will go in swimming of his own accord; and if the boys take him out several yards from the shore, and put him in, he will swim as unconcerned as a Newfoundland dog, and when he gets to the land, he shakes himself, and stands there ready to be put in again. He will catch the little fish that swim close to the shore; he is fond of fish, and sometimes watches for them for hours. He doesn't dive in for them, but sticks his paw into the water and scoops them out, and the boys say that one day he plunged in and caught a fish four or five inches long. When he was a kitten they used to put him in the water and play with him, and in that way he got over his fear of being wet."

a few yards from the door of the principal building, was the main-boom of the bark Elizabeth, on which Margaret Fuller was a passenger from Leghorn, with her husband and child, in 1850. Old fishermen on the bay are familiar with the storm in which the Elizabeth went ashore, and can readily indicate the spot where husband, wife, and child were lost in the waves. At the sale of the wreck the mournful relic of the bark was bought by some of the members of the club, and for many years it was a part of its principal flag-staff. As it became weak with age another and taller support for the national standard was erected, and the older one, reduced in height, now sustains a miniature house of tasteful design, where a large family of English sparrows make their home, and enliven the air with their continual twit

the South Bay as well as pleasant ones.
The fishermen can tell you of numerous
wrecks on Fire Island Beach, and hardly
a year passes without one or more addi-
tions to the melancholy record. Most of
these disasters are unaccompanied with
loss of life, but occasionally there is a
fearful calamity, in which the sea swal-
lows up passengers and crew, and some-
times leaves none to tell the story. The
government maintains a line of life-saving
stations along the coast, and nowhere are
they more needed than on this sandy
shore. The Olympic Club has memen-
tos of some of these wrecks in the shape
of timbers that once belonged to ships
which came to grief on Fire Island Beach.
The upper part of the tall staff near the
water front of the club grounds came from
an English ship whose name I do not re-
call; a smaller stick on the cricket lawn, | tering.

PRINCE YOUSUF AND THE ALCAYDE.
A BALLAD.

IN Granada reigned Mohammed:
Sixth who bore that name was he:
But the rightful king, Prince Yousuf,
Pined in long captivity:

Yousuf, brother to Mohammed:

Him the king had seized, and sent Prisoner to a Moorish castle,

Where ten years his life was spent.

Ill and feeble now, the usurper

Felt his death was hastening on, And would fain bequeath his kingdom And his title to his son.

Calling then a trusty servant,
He to him a letter gave:
"Take my fleetest horse, and hasten,
If my life you wish to save.

"Hie thee to the brave Alcayde
Of my castle by the sea.
To his hands give thou this letter,
And his physician bring to me."

Then in haste the servant mounted,

And for many a league he rode, Till he reached the coast and castle Where the captive prince abode. There sat Yousuf and the Alcayde In the castle, playing chess. "What is this?" the keeper muttered: "Some bad tidings, as I guess."

Pale he grew, and sat and trembled,
As his eyes the letter scanned.
And his voice was choked and speechless
As he dropped it from his hand.

"Now what ails thee ?" cries Prince You-
suf:

"Doth the king demand my head ?" "Read it!" gasps the good Alcayde.

"Ah, my lord, would I were dead!"

Yousuf reads, "When this shall reach you,

Slay my brother, and his head Straightway by the bearer send me, So I may be sure he's dead.'

"So!" cries Yousuf.

"This I looked for.
Now let us play out our game.
I was losing, you were winning,
When this ugly message came."

All amazed, the poor Alcayde

Played his knights and bishops wrong,
And the prince his moves corrected:
So in silence sat they long.

In his mind Prince Yousuf pondered:
"Why this hasty message send,
If my kind and thoughtful brother
Were not hastening to his end?
"Surely, surely, he is dying,

And if I must lose my head,

IN

QUEEN VICTORIA.

I-THE LITTLE PRINCESS.

national requirements were satisfied on the

N the year 1819 the royal family of Eng-point of heirship. She married wisely and land was not in a happy or prosperous state. Seldom before or since has there been less comfort in the prospects of the house of Hanover. King George III. was in seclusion, bowed down with incurable disease; and of all his large family, fifteen sons and daughters, most of whom were still living, not one had a successor to come after him or her as a legitimate heir to the crown. For twenty years the sole hope of the royal house had been the Princess Charlotte, the only child of a most unhappy marriage, but in herself a sweet and promising young woman, with many claims upon the tenderness and sympathy of the nation. So long as she lived, all

happily, not only making an admirable choice for herself, but bringing forward unawares out of the obscurity of princely life in Germany, and from amidst a crowd of petty princes equally distinguished and undistinguished, a family which has held a greater place since in the affairs of Christendom than perhaps any other-the family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Prince Leopold, the husband thus chosen, showed the family faculty of combining the quietest and most unostentatious private life with great devotion to public affairs, and that political penetration and sagacity which make a statesman, as much as an eye for form and color makes an artist,