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The Little Fish and the Fisherman: Annette

T • IRCIS, for his loved Annette Playing on the Clarionet, Poured forth strains of music, such As the very dead might touch :- Played and sang beside a stream Which through the meadows flowed like some delicious dream.. Meanwhile, Annette, demure and pretty; With rod and line, on fishes bent, Stood, listening unto Tircis' ditty, Which failed to lure them from their element.

Still Tircis sang, "Come, come ye fishes, come: home; Come from the cool depths of your watery Forsake your naiad, and see one more fair :

Surrender all your lives to Annette's care !

She is gentle, she is kind; In her keeping you will find Your lives more safe than down below.

Safe in a crystal pool, no want you'll know.

And should you in her keeping die, Your fate I'd suffer willingly."

Now this song was well sung, and the instrument's strains Were deliciously sweet, but, in spite of his pains, The fishes avoided the charmer's keen hook.

Then Tircis lost patience, and hastily took A net called a trammel, and, sweeping the stream, Placed at Annette's disposal trout, greyling, and bream.

Oh, shepherds of men, and not of sheep; Kings, who think you can safely keep Your subjects in order by rule of right, Attend to my counsel, and spread out your nets, Before the time comes for forlorn regrets, And let them cringe, under the rule of might.

Blowing up Ships.

Before leaving the world of waters and all its wonders, the reader will be interested in an account of the ingenious inventions for destroying ships and thus defeating the attacks of war-vessels. The germ of device is to be found in floating powder vessels, which were first. used at the siege of Antwerp, in 1585, and received their latest application in the attempt upon Fort Fisher, N. C., during the late Civil War. David Bushnell, a captain of engineers in the American revolutionary army, made the first practical application of the idea to ordinary warfare. He devised a submarine boat to carry a Torpedo, charged with 150 pounds of gunpowder, to be attached by a wooden screw to the bottom of an enemy's vessel, and fired by a clock-work fuse. The first actual trial of the invention was made in 1776, when the boat, under the guidance of Sergeant Ezra Lee, was placed under the bottom of the Eagle, an English ship of war carrying the flag of Lord Howe, lying at anchor in New York Harbor.