“Are you crazy?” asked his wife.  “What are you going to do with that red queen?”

But the Doctor placed the figure on his study-table, and often gazed at it wistfully.

Whenever, afterwards, as was often the case, any one suggested a new theory to account for the mysterious disappearance of Isabella and the Blanchards, the Doctor looked at the carved image on his table and was silent.

* * * * *

DAYBREAK.

  A wind came up out of the sea,
  And said, “O mists, make room for me!”

  It hailed the ships, and cried, “Sail on,
  Ye mariners! the night is gone!”

  And hurried landward far away,
  Crying, “Awake! it is the day!”

  It said unto the forest, “Shout! 
  Hang all your leafy banners out!”

  It touched the wood-bird’s folded wing,
  And said, “O bird, awake and sing!”

  And o’er the farms, “O chanticleer,
  Your clarion blow! the day is near!”

  It whispered to the fields of corn,
  “Bow down, and hail the coming morn!”

  It shouted through the belfry-tower,
  “Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour!”

  It crossed the churchyard with a sigh,
  And said, “Not yet! in quiet lie!”

TEA.

Gossiping Mr. Pepys little imagined, when he wrote in his Diary, September 25th, 1660, “I did send for a cup of tee, (a China drink,) of which I never had drank before,” that he had mentioned a beverage destined to exert a world-wide influence on civilization, and in due time gladden every heart in his country, from that of the Sovereign Lady Victoria, down to humble Mrs. Miff with her “mortified bonnet.”  Reader, if you wish some little information on the subjects of tea-growing, gathering, curing, and shipping, you must come with us to China, in spite of the war.  We know how to elude the blockade, how to beard Viceroy Yeh; and in one of the great hongs on the Canton River we will give you a short lecture on the virtues of Souchong and flowery Pekoe.

The native name of the article is Cha, although it has borne two or three names among the Chinese,—­in the fourth century being called Ming.  To botanists it is known as Thea, having many affinities with the Camellia.  It has long been a doubtful point whether or not two species exist, producing the green and black teas.  True, there are the green-tea country and the black-tea region, hundreds of miles apart; but the latest investigation goes to prove that there is really but one plant.  Mr. Robert Fortune, whose recent and interesting work, “The Tea Countries of China and India,” is familiar to many of our readers, has not only had peculiar facilities for gaining a knowledge of tea as grown in the Central Flowery Kingdom, but is, moreover, one of the most scientific of English botanists.  He maintains the “unity theory” of the