Without a word, John laid his tired head on Aunt Martha’s motherly bosom and wept like a child.  So pillowed, he fell asleep, as he had done so many a time in years gone by.

John Hampden learned a lesson that night which he never forgot.  He is twice eighteen years old now, and his life has brought him much honor and prosperity.

If he has one fault, people say, it is that he is almost too inflexibly exact in all his dealings—­almost too conscientious and fearful lest he should make a mistake, and so do another an injury, however slight.  But, they add, the world would be a happier place if more people were like him in this respect.

* * * * *

—­For several years a pair of storks built their nest annually in the park of the Castle Ruheleben, in Berlin.  A few years ago one of the servants placed a ring, with the name of the place and date, on the leg of the male bird, in order to be certain that the same bird returned each year.  Last spring the stork came back to its customary place, the bearer of two rings.  The second one bore the inscription:  “India sends greetings to Germany.”

RIGGING AND RIGS.

by W. J. GORDON.

Though steam is now the pride of the ocean, there are a few points in which its advantages over sail have not been great enough to crowd out the clippers, and in long voyages the sailing ship is far from obsolete.

A drawing of one of these clippers affords an opportunity for saying something about a ship’s rigging, and thereby meeting the wishes of a large number of amateur sailors.

Let it be clearly understood, however, that we are dealing with one particular class of ship, and that all ships are not rigged exactly alike.

There is a general notion that a full-rigged ship is of the same pattern all the world over, and this notion has been supported by the diagrams usually published which have taken a war ship as an example.

Now a man-of-war has an enormous crew compared to a merchant vessel, and her rigging is set up accordingly.  The things that are done on a man-of-war in spar-drill make a merchant sailor’s hair stand on end.

The rigging of a merchantman is designed for a much smaller crew to get along with, and in many respects differs from that of a full-rigged man-of-war.

Complicated as a ship’s rigging may look, it becomes intelligible enough when attacked in detail.  There are three masts and the bowsprit, which is simply the old bowmast that has gradually increased its angle until it is now almost horizontal.

These four spars are built into the ship, and all the other spars and the rigging and sails are fixed on to them.

The three masts, known also as the lower masts, are the foremast, mainmast and mizzenmast, and each of these carries two masts by way of continuations.  Thus we have foretopmast, maintopmast and mizzentopmast, and over them foretopgallantmast, maintopgallantmast and mizzentopgallantmast.