It was late in the evening when we this time came to the hare-ground; but we expected to take advantage of puss, as we had done once before, by moonlight.  As we beat about among the bushes, myriads of drowsy sparrows, that had settled to rest on the boughs, rushed up with a tremendous noise, but sank down again almost instantaneously, to be once more disturbed.  We started a few hares, but they glided away like shadows in the twilight, and we got no shots.  Next morning we again tried our fortune; but it would appear as if the wary things had held a council of war, and decamped with bag and baggage.  We found the sparrows lively and twittering, as though their night’s rest had not been disturbed; hundreds of doves cooed securely on the boughs; and half a dozen mighty storks flew off from the midst of a dew-bespangled copse.  But though we turned out the crews of two boats in default of dogs, not a hare shewed its ears; and we gave up the search disappointed.  It is remarked by old travellers on the Nile, that these animals constantly shift their quarters; not, indeed, in the course of a night, as we perhaps gratuitously supposed, but from season to season.

AN ENGLISH WORKMAN’S ACCOUNT OF A ‘STRIKE’ IN NEW YORK.

It was my second summer in New York:  a residence of two years in that busy and enterprising city had enabled me to form juster views concerning the social policy of its inhabitants than those which had presented themselves to me on first landing; two years, if properly made use of, will serve to correct many fallacies, and to throw light on places and people.  There is nothing like seeing with your own eyes, if you want really to know what the two latter are—­whether they come up to your standard of comparison or otherwise.  In several respects, chiefly material, I liked America better than England; the abundance and cheapness of provisions, for instance, and the ease with which fruits and other luxuries—­to say nothing of books and newspapers—­were procurable by the working-classes, presented, at that time at least, a striking contrast to the state of things in the ‘old country.’  I liked, too, at first, the sort of free-and-easy intercourse of the working-men with those, conventionally speaking, above them.  Jack considered himself as good as his master, though not without occasional mortifications at not finding the sentiment reciprocated.  The feeling, however, imparted a show of independence, rather captivating to one who was not a little imbued with ‘old-country’ radicalism.  On the other hand, I had been astonished, not to say disconcerted, at finding—­which I did more and more every day—­how much mechanics are looked down upon in the United States.  You have only to wear jacket and apron, and write yourself artisan, to be excluded from ‘good’ society as rigidly as if born under the caste-laws of India.  Where there appears to be an equal chance for all to rise, those who have risen draw the line of demarcation with much greater severity than strangers are willing to believe.