Close to this point the luckless vessel drove, The seeming land a monster proved to be- He oped his jaws, and with a horrid frown, [down; Driven on the point so treacherously green. we see The visions of our sleep assume reality. Fire-which is Carbon burnt with OxygenShall boil, or fry it into food for men. 10. Carbon is soft, and brittle, dark, opaque, In coal; transparent as the mountain lake In the hard diamond, sharp, and firm, and light; 11. It makes the head ache, and it dims the sight, When in close rooms for lack of Oxygen It clogs the blood that circles round the brain. 13. This gas, too, thrills in the loud cuckoo's note, 14. been [bright, 15. But being invisible is seldom seen! And all the parties named in this poetic strain, Alive, full grown, within her hull, sufficient space abounds, [pounds! 17. Although her ounceage counteth merely four Now George and all his friends are left to name the crew; [did view. And all which Grandpapa in his strange dream Though George and friends may fail, the facts shall all be told, And the grey-headed man a moral will unfold. SOLUTION OF "GRANDFATHER'S PRIZE ENIGMA," p. 298, Vol. II.* [SECOND COMPETITION.] By F. T. MOTT, Cheapside, Leicester, (To whom the Editor has awarded the Gold Watch.-See p. 325, Vol. II.) LIST, George and Katie, while I here unfold The puzzle dear old Grandfather has told. 1. Carbon and Oxygen those brothers be, Two members of the numerous family 2. Of simple elements--or such supposed, As having never yet been decomposed. [thers, 3. Most metals, and some gases are their broSulphur, and phosphorous, and several others. 4. The round world, with its continents and seas, Mountains and hollow vales, is built of these; 5. But chiefest of them all to beasts and men, Are Carbon, and his brother Oxygen; And in the forms and changes of these two Lie all the wonders which have puzzled you! 6. The diamond, costliest of all gems that shine In the rich coffers of the blazing mine, Is but a crystal of the first;-the same 7. With coal, and soot, under another name; But while one soils the miser and the crone, The other 'tis the monarch's pride to own. 8. The life-stream of the fish, the coursing blood, Spread in the gills receives the watery flood, Whence Oxygen, into its channels led, Colours the sanguine stream with vivid red; 9. And when the fish to portly size is grown, And on the shore by some bold angler thrown, * For the Editor's Solution, See p. 351, yol, ii. 18. 19. 20. Carbon enwreaths the victor's laurelled brow, 21. And Oxygen rides on the rusted plough. 22. In the sweet sugar of the grape there lies [skies A measure of both-but the warm summer First swell the fruit, then speed it to decay, And fermentation driving both away Through opening fissures in the swollen rind, Leaves but the dangerous alcohol behind. 'Tis Oxygen that in the bracing air, 23. Makes the lip rosy and the cheek more fair, Dives to the lungs, and reddening the dark blood, 24. Rescues the carbon from the turgid flood; 25. The sounding voice expels them from the chest, [to west. And spreads them through the air from east 26. Thus, as carbonic acid gas, they speed To the dim forest, where the green leaves need Their presence, and by vital action strange, Back to its elements the compound change; 27. Absorb the Carbon in the flowing sap, 28. And let the Oxygen alone escape, Which soars away to new adventures then, Thus, George and Katie, is the riddle read, Feel with awaken'd sense the heaving breast, garb on, Think of these brothers-Oxygen and Carbon! EDITED BY HERR HARRWITZ. PROBLEM No. XIII.-BY M. GROSDEMANGE.-White to move, and mate in five moves. FROM a disturbed sleep, in which the wild and beautiful, mingled with the hideous and impossible, came and went in strange and uncontrollable succession, Frank was suddenly startled by his mother's shriek. What had woke him he could not tell; and whether the shriek was a part of his dream, or a reality, he could not discover. He had been dreaming of his "Hot Mince-pie Company," the chairman of which was to eat all the pies; and he thought that he had already entered upon his arduous duties. He fancied that his father and mother sat by, delighted to see the honours conferred upon their child; and that "Maudy," as he called his mother in his fondest moments, never was so beautiful, or so dear to him. The pies, all hot and fragrant, were brought in, and presented to him, but somehow or other-though the change produced no surprise-it was not a mince-pie, but Mr. Capel who was being eaten. He dreamed that he helped himself to another, and that that turned out to be Mr. Bamford; while a third which he devoured he recognised as Mr. Billing. Nevertheless, his appetite was not yet satiated, and another mincepie was between his lips, when-oh, horror! he found himself about to eat his own father-and awoke. At first he could not discover why he was not in his own cot, nor remember what had passed the night before; but the moment it flashed upon his memory, he sprang out of bed and ran to the room where he had fallen asleep upon his mother's knee. Fainting and death are fearfully alike, and when first seen by the young, produce a shock, the memory of which is deeply engraven on the brain for ever. Comprehending nothing of any other life beyond and above the present, or only deriving ideas of the future from the form and modes of earthly things, they attach all their conceptions of existence to the material body; and when suddenly that material body is VOL. III.-NO. AXVI. deprived of sensibility, and all those signs of life cease, a cold and instinctive dread closes round them. A gulf is created, on the brink of whose precipitous sides they totter helpless, and whose chasm they know not how to fill. However much they may have been previously taught, parrotlike, to repeat on the awful subject, they first then only know that they can die. The child lives like an angel; his life is an eternity to him; he remembers no beginning, and cannot, therefore, imagine any end; he has no past, and knows no future; he lives in a Now, which he sees no reason to suppose may not be everlasting. But the sight of the seeming dead breaks the spell, destroys the certainty of that which seemed so real, and leaves a gloomy vacancy where all seemed so clear and joyous. after years religion may encourage us to stand untremblingly on the chasm's brink, while faith and knowledge throw a bridge over the abyss, and tell us of the charms of the bright spirit-land beyond the gulf-but childhood has no such support to rely upon. To him death is a vacuum more fearful than any reality. In Frank found his mother where she fell. He was shocked to see her beautiful black hair so dishevelled, and the tears upon her face, which was deadly pale. He knelt beside her, and spoke softly to her, thinking in his gentleness that it would be unkind to wake her suddenly. "It is only little Frank, Maudy," said he. "Mamma! Maudy dear! tell me-tell Frank you are not ill." The rosy cheeks of the boy grew paler as he spoke; his heart misgave him. He took his mother's hand in his; its touch blanched his lip, and sent a horrible thrill through every nerve. Trembling, he tried to call aloud, but the sound that he fain would have uttered, stuck in his throat. His tongue refused its office. He dared not go, and feared to stay. An undefinable fear came upon him, that seemed to chill his heart to stone. If some relief had not come to him, the gentle boy would have died where he knelt; but his mother heaved a sigh-it broke the spell, and he knew she was not dead. He raised her head gently in his hands, and called to her again: "Maudy dear! Maudy dear! speak to me.-Why won't you speak to your little Frank?" Fast flowed Frank's tear-drops on his Marine Joint-Stock Mining Company," mother's face, but she seemed to be un- the destruction of which was "town's talk." conscious of his presence. Then he laid Having laid his fingers on the patient's her head down gently, and ran out upon pulse, he despatched one of the gossips for the staircase, screaming aloud. Again and a respectable nurse, who lived in a small again he shrieked the names of the ser- street hard by, and requesting the others to vants, who, startled by the early and extra-leave the room, ordered the attendants to ordinary summons, hurried from their prepare warm applications, and other reschambers to the room where Mrs. Mean-toratives, without delay. well lay. "Do, oh! do help dear mamma.-Oh! make haste!-Poor mamma!" screamed Frank between his sobs. The attendants raised Mrs. Meanwell, and laid her upon the bed from which Frank had just risen, and the neighbours having been aroused, medical assistance was sent for immediately. As is too commonly the case in such circumstances, the precious minutes which should have been employed in efforts to sustain the flickering flame of life, were wasted in idle inquiries how the catastrophe had come about. Questions, whose rapid succession rendered it impossible for Frank to reply to them, if he had been collected enough, were pressed upon him by the servants and female gossips, who are always plentiful on such occasions, and who seem to love the morbid excitement of such scenes. Their curiosity was, however, doomed to be disappointed. "Oh, poor mamma! Poor dear mamma! Oh, help poor mamma," sobbed the boy as his only answer. He crept to her bedside, and pressed his mother's pale cold hand between both his own, and cried as if his heart would break, still entreating the bystanders to help "his dear mamma!" Then he would passionately call to his mother by the term of affection he had preserved since babyhood, and beseech "his dear Maudy to tell him she was not ill." But his mother gave no reply. "Frank, my boy," said Mr. Keen, mildly, "don't cry any more just now; it may make your mother worse. We will hope she will be better soon." The lad looked scrutinisingly into the doctor's face, and then, with a convulsive sigh, said "Oh, pray let her be better soon-and don't let me be sent away." "You shall be her little attendant, dear Frank," replied the surgeon, smiling to see the joy his words created. It was not long before the nurse, a fussy old woman, great in apron strings and starched cap, made her appearance, and received the directions which Mr. Keen gave her. The surgeon, however, did not leave till restoratives had been so successfully applied that Mrs. Meanwell manifested signs of reanimation, or reviving consciousness. At last the tide of returning life seemed gradually to flow, and the breathing became perceptible. Frank sat by the bedside with his large dark eyes intently watching every sign of awakening life, and scarcely daring to draw his breath, lest he should disturb the silence which had been so strictly enjoined. At last the sufferer spoke. The nurse anxiously listened to the muttered sounds, but for some time the syllables were so low that no words could be detected. Alas! when with returning strength the words were distinctly spoken, they showed only that the mind had received a severer shock than the body that reason was quite overthrown, and her thoughts "Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and ..harsh." The doctor, Mr. Keen, came at last. He was a benevolent-looking man, and his face was a true index of his heart. Possessing She uttered no words of complaint. She an insight into the importance of the mys- took what was offered to her, but asked for terious connexions which link the body to nothing, and appeared to know nothing. the mind, and the influence of mental emo-Once, her eye, that for the most time resttions upon bodily health, he anticipated, lessly wandered, fell upon Frank, and a even before his arrival at the house, the gleam of sense came over her as she said nature of the case which was to be sub- with great tendernessmitted to his care, for he knew that Meanwell was a large shareholder in the "Grand | and by." "Don't cry, Franky, he will come by But with the moment it was gone, and all was incoherency again. As soon as there remained no longer any doubt of Mrs. Meanwell's temporary restoration, the surgeon endeavoured to learn from Frank some history of the circumstances which had produced such alarming consequences; and to discover, if possible, the means of immediately communicating to Mr. Meanwell the precarious state of his wife's health; but so shocked and alarmed was the boy in the novel circumstances in which he was placed, that he could not convey what little he knew in an intelligible form. It was very touching to hear him, when he felt that the doctor was disappointed in his answers, exclaim, crying bitterly, as he pressed his head on the pillow beside his mother's-"Oh, dear Maudy! do be better, and tell them all about it." Then he would turn to Mr. Keen, and, sobbing, implore him to help his dear mamina. Inquiries having been instituted among Meanwell's immediate friends and acquaintances, and nothing having been heard of him, information was sent to the police, with a view to secure his immediate presence at his wife's bedside. In many families where he was sought, the poignancy of their own sorrows seemed to have frozen up all sympathy for others; moreover, from some of the doors the inquirers were spurned, with imprecations on the man they sought, or, with insulting answers, had the doors slammed in their faces. "Oh! he is off too, is he?" said one person in answer to the anxious questioner. "It is just what I expected. And you want to know where he is, do you?-as if you didn't! But there will be many a score wanting to discover his whereabouts before nightfall, and that more sincerely than you are seeking it." Mr. Capel, Mr. Meanwell's clerk, whose salary seemed to be in some jeopardy, was a busy searcher after his master, and ran shivering in the biting wind from house to house, coinciding in all the abuse which was heaped upon his employer, whom he knew to be a ruined man, and therefore of no further use to him. Billing's office was shut up, and his house also. On inquiry being made at Mr. Bamford's residence, a female servant answered the door, and timidly said that her master was gone abroad, and that she did not know when he would return; and added that the house was to be given up, she believed, for the furniture and effects had been consigned to a broker, and would shortly be sold. Thus from house to house the questioners with various motives went, and for some time obtained no clue to what had become of the man for whom they sought. At last a servant of Mr. Keen's learned what has been related in the previous chapterviz., that Meanwell had last been seen going towards Parker's house in a state of great exasperation. No further trace of him could be obtained, however, and the doctor therefore determined to go to Mr. Parker's residence himself. The snow had ceased to fall, but still encumbered the streets, and rendered travelling slow and difficult. The wind no longer roared aloud, but streamed frostily along the streets, and raised the snow in little ripplings on the whitened and crisp fields, which reflected the powerless and pale sunlight with a cheerless glare. Here and there the blackened hedge-rows had shaken off their shining load, to shelter from the frosty air the violets and primroses which slumbered in the banks at their feet, waiting to be disturbed by the early call of their handmaid gentle Spring. The depth of the snow was great upon wide and open heaths, but lay in vaster heaps where the drifting wind had left it in fantastic shapes, like frozen billows. In the valleys, houses had been overwhelmed, and the flocks had perished in the mountains. The most beaten roads in the city were bright and slippery, while the less frequented, far out in the country, were impassable. - Mr. So difficult was transit, that it was several hours before the surgeon's carriage deposited him at the door of Parker's house, in the Uxbridge Road. The inmates manifested the greatest alarm, and would only open the door as far as the chain which was attached to it would permit. Parker had not been seen for two days and nights; nevertheless, his absence would not have alarmed them had it not been that he had been inquired for by many anxious and many violent visitors. The servants stated that, amongst others, a gentleman named Meanwell had been to the house on the previous day-had insisted upon enter |