ninepence per week. And many years ago, during the potato famine in Ireland, a medical man, who is still living and well known in the east of Scotland, set himself for several months to live on three or four pence per diem, and succeeded! His fare was bread, meal, and water. But there is, we imagine, a prevalent feeling that instances of this kind are not valuable or practically useful to the general run of people. A domesticated housewife is apt to shake her head at the tabulated items, and to ask how she and her family would look after the experience of a month of such meagre regimen. Her husband perhaps tries the method for six days, and at the end thereof, feeling slightly unwell, gladly indulges on the seventh in a Sunday dinner of old-fashioned proportions, and feels decidedly the better for it. But we are quite convinced that there are methods of economy, and items of experience in thrift, which are worthy of the attention of all who wish to reduce their expenses, and which even the most practical need not regard with incredulity. In the instances of frugality we have alluded to, one has a sort of undefined consciousness that they have been chiefly practised by exceptional people, who, by some happy constitutional peculiarities, have been able to live and thrive on fare which would be to others the extreme of hardship. It is rather with the view of rendering some help to ordinary people, that the present writer proposes to give the results of some of his and his wife's experiences in the art of cutting down expenses. At the outset of these details, he may explain that he and his wife are of the age of forty or thereabout; that their family consists of five strapping boys, the eldest of whom is eleven, and the youngest two years old; and that their domestic retinue is composed of an active 'general' servant-girl of twenty-five, and a useful nursegirl aged fourteen. He may also intimate that every member of the household is possessed of fair health and appetite; the latter characteristic being perhaps shared in the largest degree by the two servants and the eldest boy; but of no member of it can it be said that he or she is an exceptionally small eater. It is the habit of the family to breakfast soon after eight o'clock; after which the two elder boys go off to a school two miles distant; number three departs to a lady's school close at hand; and the father to his business. Boys numbers one and two take with them a hearty lunch of bread-and-cheese or breadand-butter, which they eat in the middle of the day, at which time the rest of the family assemble to dinner. At about five o'clock, the two boys return from the distant school, and have their dinner, while the other members of the family partake of tea. The scholars, after a little play, get to their lessons till eight o'clock, when they have a slight repast, and then to bed; the infants-namely, the two-year-old and his next brother, who is four-having meanwhile gone quietly to sleep. At nine o'clock, the heads of the household sit down to a simple supper, and are able to indulge in their first opportunity for the day of talking over current events and domestic affairs. We kept an accurate account of our expenditure for eating and drinking for the first seven weeks of the year 1880, which will be of interest chiefly because it is a genuine record of the doings of average people. It is not pretended that it displays a household economy arranged on the most artistic principles. It simply claims that it details what we nine people consumed in seven weeks, during which period we enjoyed capital health, and did a fair amount of work. The account is as follows: family of nine persons during seven weeks: Items of expenditure for eating and drinking by a Meat (average price 10d. per lb.). .4 3 2 .1 16 0 .1 14 9 .0 19 3 .0 16 4 ..0 15 1 .0 12 9 .0 12 3 .0 13 Haricot beans, lentils, and peas (24d. per lb.) 0 5 10 Flour..... Eggs Treacle.. Rice.... .0 4 8 .0 20 .0 1 9 .0 1 9 Green vegetables .0 1 7 Spirits. .0 1 .0 1 4 Mustard, pepper, &c.... .0 0 7 .0 0 6 .0 0 2 .L.13 4 8 Fish Total.................... On perusing the above account, some items of which might of course be omitted, if necessary, we are of opinion that the item 'Meat' might with advantage be reduced, and the item 'Fish' augmented, which last is small in amount in consequence of the difficulty of procuring fish in our neighbourhood. Farther on in the year, too, the item 'Green vegetables' will be considerably increased; and we may also say that exceptional circumstances cause us to pay a higher price for tea and oatmeal than we otherwise should. Taking the amount as it stands, L.13, 4s. 8d. for seven weeks gives a weekly expenditure of L.1, 17s. 94d., or 4s. 24d. per head or a daily expenditure per head of about 71d. Thus, although we have not quite reached the minimum of sixpence a day,' we have come somewhat near it, and have enjoyed a much more diversified diet than the advocates of a 'sixpence-a-day' system generally allow. It will be of interest to the domesticated reader to know some details of this example of living. For breakfast we take oatmeal porridge, bread-andbutter and tea, with an occasional slice of bacon, which is included under the heading 'Meat.' For dinner we have cold meat, or cold meat cookeries-we never cut our joints hot-potatoes, bread-and-cheese, and beer; diversified by the periodical addition of soups, puddings, or tarts. For tea we have bread-and-butter, toast or breadand-treacle; and for supper, bread-and-cheese and beer, or haricot beans, lentils, or the like, cooked in various ways. The housekeeper with a growing family soon discovers that it is necessary narrowly to watch every avenue of expense, if retrenchment is to be effected, and that nothing is more imperative than that she should have all her stores under her own eye and regulated by her absolute control. Servants are too apt, for instance, to throw away any bones which are cut off from the joint in the Journal sort of thing. And she had no especial resentment for it. Feminine human nature likes to be admired; and, for that matter, even the very ugliest male amongst us is not superior to the feeling. came a father who was anxious that his process of carving. These should be collected in à suitable vessel for boiling down into soup. Domestics are also given to using more of any material they may have to deal with than is required. If they make a pudding, they make more paste than is absolutely necessary; and the overplus is converted into an additional cake Mr Jolly had no sooner settled in the or tart, the fate of which is either to be eaten county, than he had begun to inform himself between meals by the servant herself, or given of the position and expectations of every to a child; an entirely unnecessary luxury, that does good to nobody. Pieces of bread are wasted; eligible parti within its limits-as indeed bepotatoes are denuded of their coverings with too careless a hand, so that out of the parings, a rigid household economist would probably think it possible to concoct a nutritious meal; or he might insist upon the potatoes being served invariably in their 'jackets.' We may say that potato parings mixed with small-coal or slack will keep the afternoon kitchen fire going admirably. Savoury and wholesome dishes may be made by mixing meat with vegetables or rice, which will be found a far less expensive method of using animal food than that of cooking steaks or chops. The untidiest fragments of cold meat can be made into presentable pièces de résistance for the economical family, by this mode. There is no more satisfying dinner than a thoroughly well-made Irish stew; while one of our favourite Saturday repasts, and one which is highly appreciated by our hungry boys, is a substantial potato-pie. 'Dormers-which are a compound of a small proportion of meat with a goodly proportion of rice are always a toothsome delicacy, if served up with the good gravy which a skilful housekeeper can always manage to get from her weekly joint; and directions for all these cookeries can be found in the simplest book of recipes. It is not beneath the attention of any wise and appa are sensible man to take an interest in these VALENTINE STRANGE. A STORY OF THE PRIMROSE WAY. BY DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY. CHAPTER VII.—'OH,' SAID GERARD, 'THAT'S daughter should be happily settled and out no he assumed it, he was Mr Jolly had his grand manner, and when Mont as frosty as Blanc, being of opinion that to be icy was to be majestic. He had assumed his grand manner now, and fancied that the stranger of the morning's ride had gone away in deep reverence of spirit. Perhaps Mr Jolly was less majestic than he thought himself-perhaps Val was an unusually irreverent young man. His mind was occupied with a pleasanter DURING the foregoing brief colloquy, Mr Strange theme than Mr Jolly's manner. The appearance had kept his eyes upon the lady's face, and had of Constance did not strike him as it had struck confirmed his first impression of her beauty. Gerard Lumby. The two young men were totally Constance was not unaware of his glance-what different in nature and manners. Gerard had a young woman would have been?-and Val's knightly tenderness and respect for all women, aspect was not unpleasing. He was evidently and had scarcely ever kissed any feminine lips but a gentleman; and then Constance, who was his mother's. He would have done any hard and as little vain as most really beautiful women dangerous thing rather than have been forced really are, remembered that his horse's head had to pay a direct compliment to a young woman. been turned in the direction from which she To him, women seemed more than human herself had come, and she knew perfectly well-even a housemaid had a nimbus about her, that he had followed for the express purpose a sort of protecting something which overawed of looking at her once more. Men often did that him. But Val in any fresh country-house knew every petticoated soul within it in a week, and made love to all of them in a way-hostess, daughters, guests, maids in service, with a fine merry indifference which won the female heart. And "Then what shall you do?' asked Gerard. What's the good of being in the country if you do not hunt?' 'I don't know,' responded Strange. 'It's a he did not worship-but prided himself on of his adventures; and they reached the house, bore to have plans.' Then Val began to tell understanding the sex; showing thereby his and sought Gerard's den together. Above the own weakness and folly. Here and there-mantel-piece, framed in violet-coloured velvet, after years of close and tender intercourse, was a coloured cabinet portrait of Constance, broken by the rubs of life, made sweet by which Gerard had begged from Milly. Strange birth, and holy by death of little children- stood with his elbows on the marble slab and one man learns to understand one woman; but examined it critically. Gerard, observing him, to strive to sum the sex were a vain arithmetic, endured a ridiculous pang of jealousy. though a man had the years of Methuselah in which to perform it. Val rode away admiring, but by no means subdued. The encounter had taken place within a couple of miles of Lumby Hall, and he was on his way thither to surprise Gerard. And it chanced that Gerard was back in time to be surprised; for no sooner had the hounds thrown off, than there came a check; and the young fellow, after sitting disconsolately on horseback for some five minutes, waiting for the hounds to recover scent, felt the blind boy's butt-shaft' so rankle in him, that he turned, and rode almost savagely homewards, sorely troubled by the beauty of the incomparable Constance all the way. 'Ahoy!' cried Val, discerning Lumby's figure before him in the road. "Why, Strange, old man,' said Gerard, reining in as Val came plunging up, you look like a Red Indian. Have you circumnavigated the world yet?' 'Not yet,' said Val. The fact is that when we got to Calais-we went there first, you know -Gilbert had a plan. Gilbert's a wonderful fellow at a programme, and his notion was that we might send the yacht down to Trieste ' 'Trieste?' cried Gerard. And that we might join it there. So we had a fortnight in Paris, and a fortnight in Vienna, and a fortnight in Venice; and then we got aboard again, and went to Naples. Charming place, Naples. Lots of pleasant people there.' 'Stay there long?' asked Gerard. Well,' answered Val with a little laugh, 'I've only just got back. Gilbert met a fellow, and wanted to go coasting round everywhere. So I let him go; and they went to Athens and Smyrna and Corfu, and all sorts of places. Then they called for me; and we have just come up, past Gibraltar and across the "Bay of Biscay, O," to Southampton-and here I am." 'And when are you off again?' 'Don't be in a hurry to get rid of me,' said Val. I shall cruise again in the summer, I daresay; but I'm not going to brave the dangers of the wintry deep in a cockle-shell any more.' 'Shall you stay for the hunting?' asked Gerard. He was afraid that Strange would see his idol. He was afraid of everybody, distrustful of himself, despairing of success, and spiritually sore all over. Now, did you ever know me hunt?' Val asked, in almost an injured tone. 'Am I the man to risk my bones for nothing? I hate to make a toil of a pleasure. I am not ambitious to go about with a crutch. I have no yearning to be trepanned.' 'Who is she?' asked Val, with his head on one side, smiling at the picture through eyes half closed. 'Whom do you mean?' returned the disingenuous Gerard, feigning to be busy in the attempt to open a cigar cabinet. "The lady here. I met her in the lane this morning on horseback, escorted by an old-Indian sort of man.' 'Oh,' said Gerard, with mighty unconcern, 'that's Jolly's sister.' Strange, standing a little back, began to spout What find I here? Should sunder such sweet friends. Here, in her hair 'What's all that rubbish about?' asked Gerard roughly. At these hyperbolic praises, a keen pang of jealousy ran through him. Who had a right to praise her? The rubbish was given to the world by the Swan of Avon,' said Strange; and Jolly's sister's portrait is worthy the praise.' 'Never mind the Swan of Avon,' said Gerard. -'Do you think of going back to Naples?' So they drifted into talk again; but Strange could not or would not cease to admire the portrait. 'I say, Lumby,' he said at length-tell young Jolly I'm back again, when you see him next; and bring him over to my place, and have a day or two with me.' He was standing again before the portrait when he said this; and a sudden resolve passed through Gerard's mind, and made him tingle all over. Late that night, when Strange had gone, and Gerard was in his own room alone, he gave words to this resolve. 'I can't afford to waste a day. I will speak to-morrow.' His heart beat against his side, and he trembled. What a thing is love! It was only a quarter of a year since he had first seen her, and, without her, life seemed not worth the living. Whatever of spiritual loveliness his manly heart and honest nature could conceive, with that he dowered her. He worshipped at her shrine with such sacrifices as such men offer; whilst she sat with dreamy eyes over a book in her little boudoir at the Grange, and looked, as he figured her, an inspiration for painter and Journal poet. But we know what Portia's golden casket held. Constance was thinking of Gerard, and weighing the chances of his coming, and her pulse beat evenly, and her bosom was unmoved. MODERN IMPROVEMENTS ON BOARD WE often hear people talk of 'the ship of the we shall ever see another Great Eastern. It is not, however, to technical comparisons and details of the build or style of ships that this paper is devoted, but to those alterations which have taken place of late years in smaller but not unimportant appliances connected with their working; and all more or less directed to the economy of life and labour, such as improved mechanism for rescue or avoiding danger, and various forms of apparatus which have diminished the number of hands formerly necessary to man our ocean vessels. white flame, which flares away for an hour or more, quite inextinguishable by rain, wind, or submersion-burning rather the better, indeed, for all three-shedding a brilliant illumination on all around, as it mounts on the waves, and forming a valuable beacon to the imperilled man, if he have any power to make efforts for his own safety. But while we have been looking at the buoy, boats have been swung out, manned, and lowered; a comparatively rapid and simple process nowadays, even in a heavy sea-way, by means of patent davits, combined with another apparatus termed disengaging hooks. The latter insure that the boat shall be freed at both ends simultaneously as soon as she reaches the water, so that the danger of capsizing, from the dragging of one 'fall,' as the ropes by which the boat is lowered are called, is in great measure obviated; while the former lessen the risk of its being stove in against the ship's side. To prove how perfectly these hooks act, soon after they were adopted on board a steamer in which the writer sailed at the time, during a fearful storm in the Bay of Biscay, a huge sea broke over the quarter, and swept all the afterpart of the deck, a wave so big that it lightly touched the bottom of the captain's gig, though it was swung high on the davits and in board' that is, hanging over the deck, and not, as is usual in fine weather, over the ship's side; and away went the gig with its lower hooks into the seething chaos beneath, while the upper ones remained dangling from the falls; a conclusive though costly tribute to the ingenuity of the inventors Messrs Hill and Latimer Clarke. Every one will agree that these Holmes's buoys and speedy boat-lowering arrangements are not the least admirable of modern improvements in nautical matters. Heaving the lead and heaving the log are familiar expressions to the ear; but are a little A pitch-dark night; no moon or star; blowing apt to be confounded by landsmen, who derive and raining; the inky blackness relieved only their ideas of things maritime from nautical by the crests of the nearer waves, which rise dramas and novels, in which the characters roll almost to the level of the rail as the ship rolls about and shiver their timbers and splice the heavily. A cry-'Man overboard!' Bustle, main-brace, and otherwise talk and act as no hurry, and excitement, but no confusion. In less sailor ever did or ever will. The lead is, of time than it takes to write these words, the man course, a weight of that metal attached to a long who happens to be nearest will have rushed to line, employed for ascertaining the depth of the stern, even as he gives the alarm, and with water, and is used in two forms. One, the his jack-knife will cut adrift the lanyard that smaller, is swung backwards and forwards in holds the life-buoy, always in readiness there, the hand of a sailor who stands on a ledge over to the taffrail. This, by the very act of falling, the ship's side-technically, in the chains'fires a rocket, and displays a flag on the staff that until it has acquired sufficient momentum to surmounts it. But a flag is of as little use as orna- reach the water as far forward as will compenment on a night like this; so the officer of the sate for the speed at which the vessel is travelling; watch on the bridge, while giving the necessary so that by the time the lead touches the bottom, orders for stopping or otherwise manoeuvring the the man, though still standing, is over the spot ship to the best advantage, prepares and throws where it lies, and the rope is as nearly as into the sea a life-belt, to which is attached a possible perpendicular; certain knots, marks, and peculiar float by a short line. This float consists pieces of coloured rag on it indicate the depth of a piece of wood in which a tin canister is firmly in fathoms, which he immediately calls; for this fixed; and the preparation to which we have takes place only when a ship is in shallow alluded lies simply in perforating the bottom of water, such as on entering or leaving a harbour, this canister, and cutting or breaking off its nozzle- where, if care be not taken, there might be a like top-an affair of a few seconds only. danger of getting aground. contains a mixture of chemicals, in which metallic The other or heavier lead is used farther out potassium is the chief ingredient, and this burns at sea, not so much for the purpose of learning by the contact of the water itself! No sooner the exact amount of water, as to enable th does it touch the surface, than up shoots a bright navigator to judge from the depth, and mae It especially from the character of the bottom, as indicated in the sample brought up by the wax or tallow in the concavity underneath the lead, the exact position of his ship, and the propinquity of the land. Thus, a vessel coming from any part of the south or west, often arrives in the English Channel, especially in foggy or other bad weather, without having sighted the Lizard Point, Cape Ushant, or any of the other promontories on the English or French coasts. How is the captain to know where he is? He stops, and heaves the deep-sea lead. A result of seventy or eighty fathoms tells him that he is somewhere in the chops of the Channel; and this will gradually decrease, as he goes farther up, to about fifty fathoms. Then, as to which coast he is approaching. In mid-channel the bottom consists of sand and small broken shells at its western extremity, and of 'ooze-blue clay-like mud-farther east; towards the Scilly Isles it becomes coarse and gravelly; near Ushant the lead will bring up very fine sand without shells; and a little farther along the French side, the tallow will catch nothing at all, since the bottom is rocky or composed of large smooth pebbles. It is in this deep-sea lead that all the recent improvements have been made, the most notable being Sir William Thomson's patent. Instead of a lump of lead, a brass cylinder is used, which contains in its interior a kind of registering barometer, which in itself indicates the exact depth by recording the superincumbent pressure of water. Thin pianoforte wire is used instead of a hempen rope; and the great advantage of the whole arrangement is, that it can be used while the ship is going at full speed, since the amount of line which runs out is of no consequence, even though it go far astern. Besides registering the depth, this ingenious contrivance brings up specimens of the nature of the bed. The log, which is hove under ordinary circumstances every two hours, is a little conical bag made of canvas, the mouth of which is kept open by a wooden pin. When thrown over the stern, this float remains practically stationary while the line to which it is attached runs out, the slight tendency to be towed by the motion of the ship being nullified by the resistance of the bag, whose distended mouth lies towards the vessel. A sand-glass of fourteen seconds is turned as the log goes overboard; and when its time has expired, the log is checked, and the nearest mark on it carefully noted. These knots and marks are so arranged that the line is graduated in parts, which bear the same relation to a knot or nautical mile that fourteen seconds do to sixty minutes-hence the name, not a corruption of nautical, as some have said-and the speed per hour is thus obtained. A smart tug on the rope disengages the pin, and allows the bag to collapse and be hauled in by the apex, otherwise it would be extremely difficult to bring it home on a ship going at the rate of ten or twelve knots. Such is the old log, which has been used from time immemorial, and though not yet entirely superseded, is rapidly becoming so by late inventions. Numerous patent logs have now made their appearance, of which we may notice Massey's nd Walker's as fair examples, the rest differing to'm these only in minor details. The first a small named may be roughly described as brass tubular box, to which is attached a screw, like the propeller of a steamer in miniature; this revolves more or less rapidly, according to the speed at which it is dragged through the water, and records the number of its revolutions on an index inside the box. Some few elaborations have been added; but this is the primary principle; and as each revolution means a certain distance traversed-measurable exactly by the pitch of the screw-it is easy to see that when the log is hauled on board, the index will show how far the ship has travelled in a given time. Walker's Registering Taffrail Log has a screw only at the end of the line; this twists the cord, and causes it to work certain mechanism behind a little dial which is fixed on the rail, and thus indicates at any time, without the necessity of hauling in, the distance in miles which has been traversed and the actual speed at the moment. It also strikes a bell at the completion of every knot, and is altogether a wonderful and ingenious though simple apparatus. Captain Woolward has devised a windlass for pulling in the old log, which not only effects a great saving of labour, and gives a more correct result, from the impossibility of the line getting fouled, and the action of the mechanical break in stopping it, but does away also with those exceedingly painful 'brushburns' which the men were liable to get from the rope running swiftly through their hands. The constant heaving of the log, especially in a steamship, will soon cut even the brass plates on the taffrail into deep grooves. Topsails and even topgallant-sails can now be set, taken in, and stowed from the deck without sending any one aloft, by means of an arrangement of rollers very similar to that by which we pull up or lower our window-blinds. Nearly all the standing rigging is now made of wire; and not only hawsers but 'whips,' or ropes for raising cargo from the holds or lighters alongside, of the same material, are employed; such ropes being not only stronger, but one-third the weight, and one-seventh the bulk only, of hemp or manilla. The flukes of modern anchors are made in one piece, bent at a right angle like an arm, and united to the shaft or shank at the elbow by a hinge, on which it revolves, so that when the anchor is down and one fluke has laid hold of the ground, the other, instead of sticking up uselessly and mischievously, and liable to entangle the cable, is folded down flat on the shank. By-the-way, it is a curious thing that the little anchors one sees dangling from watchchains or worn as pins or engraved invariably foul of a rope-in various ornamental devices, are always incorrectly fashioned, the flukes and the stock or cross-bar at the other end of the shank being represented in the same plane, whereas in the real article they lie at right angles to each other. A well-glazed chart-room on the bridge not only affords the officers of the watch a constant opportunity of consulting the charts without leaving their posts, but shelters the man at the wheel and those on the look-out in bad weather. This innovation has not obtained ground without great opposition, naturally from the 'old school' of captains and ship-owners, who by their |