To-day has evidently been a dull one with him.  I observe he whistles the popular airs of the period with less shrillness and intensity.  Providence, however, looks not unkindly on him, and delivers into his hands as it were two nice little boys who have at this moment innocently strayed into our street.  They are pink and white children, and are dressed alike, and exhibit a certain air of neatness and refinement which is alone sufficient to awaken the antagonism of the vulgar little boy.  A sigh of satisfaction breaks from his breast.  What does he do?  Any other boy would content himself with simply knocking the hats off their respective heads, and so vent his superfluous vitality in a single act, besides precipitating the flight of the enemy.  But there are aesthetic considerations not to be overlooked; insult is to be added to the injury inflicted, and in the struggles of the victim some justification is to be sought for extreme measures.  The two nice little boys perceive their danger and draw closer to each other.  The vulgar little boy begins by irony.  He affects to be overpowered by the magnificence of their costume.  He addresses me (across the street and through the closed window), and requests information if there haply be a circus in the vicinity.  He makes affectionate inquiries after the health of their parents.  He expresses a fear of maternal anxiety in regard to their welfare.  He offers to conduct them home.  One nice little boy feebly retorts; but alas! his correct pronunciation; his grammatical exactitude, and his moderate epithets only provoke a scream of derision from the vulgar little boy, who now rapidly changes his tactics.  Staggering under the weight of his vituperation, they fall easy victims to what he would call his “dexter mawley.”  A wail of lamentation goes up from our street.  But as the subject of this article seems to require a more vigorous handling than I had purposed to give it, I find it necessary to abandon my present dignified position, seize my hat, open the front door, and try a stronger method.

WAITING FOR THE SHIP.

A Fort point IDYL.

About an hour’s ride from the Plaza there is a high bluff with the ocean breaking uninterruptedly along its rocky beach.  There are several cottages on the sands, which look as if they had recently been cast up by a heavy sea.  The cultivated patch behind each tenement is fenced in by bamboos, broken spars, and driftwood.  With its few green cabbages and turnip-tops, each garden looks something like an aquarium with the water turned off.  In fact you would not be surprised to meet a merman digging among the potatoes, or a mermaid milking a sea cow hard by.

Near this place formerly arose a great semaphoric telegraph with its gaunt arms tossed up against the horizon.  It has been replaced by an observatory, connected with an electric nerve to the heart of the great commercial city.  From this point the incoming ships are signalled, and again checked off at the City Exchange.  And while we are here looking for the expected steamer, let me tell you a story.