my wife’s room.  She lay sleeping quietly.  Upon her bosom lay her child, whom I had never seen.  She was as beautiful as when I left her; but I could see a mournful expression upon her face.  Perhaps she was dreaming of me.  I gazed for a long time; I did not make any noise, for I dared not wake her.  At length I imprinted a soft kiss upon the cheek of my little child.  While doing it a tear dropped from my eye and fell upon her cheek.  Her eyes opened as clearly as though she had not been sleeping.  I saw that she began to be frightened, and I said, ‘Mary, it is your husband!’ and she clasped me about my neck, and fainted.  But I will not describe that scene.  She is now the happy wife of a poor man.  I am endeavoring to accumulate a little property, and then I will leave the sea forever.”

MR. WILTON.  “A vote of thanks for Grandy.  That little narrative has agreeably refreshed our minds, while the wine and cake has had the like effect on our bodies.  Now, voyage the last!”

GEORGE.  “Oh, papa! that sounds so strangely.  I cannot bear the last of anything; and now particularly, it reminds us how soon our happy evening meetings will be at an end, and naught left but the bare recollection of them.”

MRS. WILTON.  “Well, my dear, I will not distress you by repeating the obnoxious word.  We will start anew, and sail round the coast of Africa.  We are a goodly party, and I dare venture to say, shall not lack for amusement during the voyage.”

MR. STANLEY.  “Then we are not to go so far south as Victoria Land, and see all the wonderful things Sir James Ross saw?”

MR. WILTON.  “No:  we have been in the cold long enough, and I am rejoiced that we have no more enormous icebergs to encounter—­no more still ice-fields stretching away in every direction, or clashing and grinding under the influence of mighty storms—­no more mountains cased in eternal ice; but we have really bid adieu to the wintry desolation of those frozen regions that

  ‘Lie dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms.’”

MR. STANLEY.  “I am glad to get into a more genial climate, and I perceive our next voyage commences in the Mediterranean; that is, if it be the intention of our young discoverers to call at the bays on the north of Africa.”

DORA.  “It is our intention, sir; and the first gulf, called Malillih, is on the coast of Morocco.  Mrs. Wilton has kindly undertaken the land survey.”

MRS. WILTON.  “Morocco is now only the remains of a state, although at one period, when the Moors were in the zenith of their power, it was a splendid country.  Still, however, the inhabitants entertain the loftiest ideas of themselves and their native land, and half-naked creatures as they are, they style the Europeans ‘agein,’ or barbarians, and hold them in contempt.”

GRANDY.  “But the Moors, although Mohammedans, are not destitute of virtues; and, as a peculiarly good trait in their character, a Moor never abandons himself to despair; neither sufferings nor losses can extort from him a single murmur; to every event he submits as decreed by the will of God, and habitually hopes for better times.  We might learn something even from the Moors.”