The Ariadne careened until her lee-earrings dipped into the sea, but righted herself as she came before the wind, and rose like a duck on the back of the angry swells.  It was a fearful night, and every incident of it is photographed indelibly on my memory.  There was not a rag of canvas on the ship except her heavy main-staysail, and yet one after another the topmasts splintered and fell, hampering the lower rigging and littering the deck with the wreck, the broken royals making terrible work as they whipped about in the storm; but it was utterly impossible to cut them loose.  Well, it’s getting late, and I must hurry to the end of my story.  The storm lasted about three hours, and then the wind fell almost as suddenly as it rose.

“When daylight came there was no trace of the tremendous commotion of the night except the heavy swell of the wearied sea.  We had weathered the gale in safety, and although the Ariadne was dreadfully battered and her rigging badly cut up, there was no damage which we were not able to repair sufficiently well to continue our voyage.”

Uncle Joseph paused as if he had no more to say.  I waited a moment, and then ventured to ask, “How did the Ellen get through it?”

“When the sun rose clear I swept the horizon with my glass, but she was not in sight.  She has never been heard of since.”

Again the old gentleman paused, but this time I dared not break the silence.  At last he dropped the stump of his cigar into the ash-holder and said, “I never made but one more voyage after that, and that was to bring John’s orphans to Charleston after their mother’s death.”

ROBERT WILSON.

ART—­EXPERIENCE OF AN IGNORAMUS.

When I remember my first visits to the picture-galleries of Europe, I am filled with compassion for the multitudes of my country-folk who yearly undergo the same misery.  I hope they do not all know how miserable they are, and fancy that they enjoy themselves; but with many the suffering is too great for self-deception, and they come home to look back upon those long halls, filled with the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, as mere torture-chambers, whence nothing is brought away but backache, headache, weary feet and an agonizing confusion of ideas.  Some of them avenge themselves by making fun of the whole matter:  they tell you that there is a great deal of humbug about your great pictures and statues; that Raphael is nearly as much overrated as Shakespeare; that it is all nonsense for people to pretend to admire headless trunks and dingy canvases.  To them I have nothing to say:  they find consolation in their own cleverness.  But a great many are left with a mingled sense of disappointment and yearning:  they cannot get rid of the thought that they have missed a great pleasure—­that a precious secret has remained hidden from them, and that through no fault of theirs.  It is to these, who have my sincere sympathy, and to those who have the same trials before them, that I offer the result of three years’ acquaintance with the great galleries of Europe, premising that I have no technical knowledge of art:  I have only learned to enjoy it.