A “three-masted schooner” has only lower masts and topmasts, and each mast is rigged for fore-and-aft sails, but more often than not these vessels carry yards at the fore and sometimes at the main.

With the “ketch” begins what has been called the mast-and-a-half division of sailing vessels.  The tall mast is the mainmast, the short mast is the mizzen; some ketches carry square sails on the main, some carry a topsail on the mizzen—­the distinctive mark of the ketch being that the mizzen is a pole-mast and stepped in front of the stern-post.  If the mizzen be stepped abaft the stern-post the vessel becomes a “dandy” or “yawl.”

In the cutter the mizzen is dispensed with, and in a sloop of the old rig the difference between the two is that the cutter has two headsails, the jib and foresail, while the sloop has but one, the foresail.

Sometimes the sloop has a standing bowsprit, while the cutter has a running one; but this distinction is not essential.  Indeed, the words cutter and sloop have begun to be used indiscriminately, except, perhaps, that a cutter is for pleasure and a sloop for trade.

In a spritsail rig the gaff is at the head of the sail, and works on the mast in cheeks; the sprit runs diagonally across the sail, and is hung on to the mast in what is practically a loop and lashing.

This has also what looks like a mizzen, but it is fixed on to the rudder and is known as a “jigger.”  Sometimes the jigger is triangular, like the yawl’s mizzen, but the shape makes no difference in the name.

The lug is the old sail of the Norsemen.  There are two kinds of lugs, “dipping” and “standing.”

The dipping lug has a great part of the sail beyond the mast, so that when a tack has to be made the sail has to be lowered, dipped round the mast and rehoisted.

The standing lug projects very little beyond this mast and does not require to be lowered when tacking.

Fishing boats are nearly all rigged with a dipping lug for the mainsail and a standing lug for the mizzen, and they have also a jib, while some of them carry topsails over the lugs.

Luggers may carry any number of masts, but as a rule they have two; some have a gaff mizzen.  When the foot of the lug is lashed to a boom it is said to be “balanced.”

         THE NORTH AVENUE ARCHINGTONS.

by ANNA J. M’KEAG.

When Mary Anne Smith returned for her second year at Mrs. Hosmer’s Seminary, both teachers and pupils were astonished at the change in her appearance and manners which a summer at the seashore had produced.

The previous year she had been plain Mary Anne Smith, an energetic, impulsive girl, whose most serious fault was a tendency to soiled collars and buttonless shoes, but who was, on the whole, very good-hearted and sincere.

She had returned to school as Marie Antoinette Smythe, a fashionable young lady.  She discontinued her old, romping, laughing ways and became as sedate as the gravest Senior.