S. B. C. Samuels

“ While Jack was champing his feast with great satisfaction, an English boy, of Johnny’s size, came towards them.
“Is that your horse?” said he.
“Yes,” answered Johnny; “isn’t he a good one?”
“Is he a good one?” asked the boy.
“I guess he is,” said Johnny, hotly; “there isn’t a better horse anywhere.”
“But papa’s groom told me,” persisted the English lad, “that a horse with four white feet and a white nose was worthless. ”

“ Looking back upon the pleasant summer months at Castle Wernier, the children thought time had never gone so quickly. They were soon to be parted from each other, and their pleasant German home and every object took a new interest to them.
“The value of a thing is never known till we have lost it,” Herbert said, sorrowfully, thinking how lonely Adele and he would become when parted from their companions.
“Nor how dear a place an old castle is, until we are forced to leave it,” said Eric.
“I remember thinking once,” said Nettie, “that this place was horrible. ”

“ I’d have thrashed him!”
“Hush, Johnny,” said his father. “Go on, Eric. You say he found the money in the fauteuil. How in the world did the things get into this room?”
“That is just what puzzles everybody,” answered Eric, earnestly. “Uncle John, how could it have got there? and the ring, too?”
“Where did you find the ring, Johnny?”
“Right here, sir, upon the floor, by Froll’s cage;” answered Johnny, getting up and standing in the place.
“It is very mysterious, certainly,” Mr. Van Rasseulger said, “and the strange circumstances give the man strong grounds for suspicion against you. ”

“ You hear just a moaning, wailing sound, like the last notes of an organ, and you cannot help thinking of dead men floating over and around you.
“A diver does not like to go down more than a hundred and twenty feet; at that depth the pressure is painful, and there is danger of internal injury. I can stay down, for five or six hours at a time, at a hundred and fifteen or twenty feet, and do a good deal of hard work. In the waters of Lake Huron the diver can see thirty or forty feet away, but the other lakes will screen a vessel not ten feet from you. ”

“ The door stood open, disclosing a pleasant room, with various kinds of odd-looking armor lying around: seated by a table was a gentleman dressed in black, whom Eric recognized at once as the one whose glasses Froll had stolen.
This gentleman was looking for Eric, and said at once, when he entered the room,—
“I am pleased to see you, monsieur,” and politely requested him to be seated.
“Do you speak French?” he asked.
“Not very well, sir,” answered Eric.
“German?” inquired the stranger.
“Yes, sir,” said Eric.
“And English?”
“Yes, sir; I am an American.”
“I am a Frenchman,” said Mr. Lacelle. ”

“ Johnny, divided between regret at parting with his father, and delight at the novel excursion; Eric, eager and excited, with mischievous Froll, demure enough just now, seated composedly upon his shoulder; the doctor coolly testing the saddle girths, and 165 Mr. Van Rasseulger seeing them off, happy in their pleasure.
“Be good and kind to my boy, as you have always been, Eric,” he said, bidding his nephew “good by.”
“You mean, uncle John, as you have always been to me,” Eric replied, with gratitude beaming in his eyes. “And Johnny is a dear little fellow; no one could help being good to him.” ”

“ Gretchen announced, through her tears.
All the Werniers, the ancient holders of the castle, had been Herr Vons; and as Mrs. Nichols was a Wernier, Gretchen had adopted the villagers’ fashion of bestowing the title upon the husband.
The servants were in the hall, sorrowfully 20 awaiting the departure of their kind patrons.
“Good by! Good by!” the children shouted; while the mournful group bade them “God speed.”
“Who’s forgotten anything?” said Nettie, crowding into a corner of the carriage. ”

“ You hear nothing from above. The great fishes will come swimming about, rubbing their noses against your glass, and staring with a wonderful look into your eyes. The very stillness sometimes gives life a chill. ”

“ When I am a man I think I will be a florist. I am very fond of flowers; they were a great comfort to me when I was blind.”
As Allan ceased speaking, the boat stopped, and they were landed upon a short flight of stone steps. Eric gave directions for the baggage, and then all proceeded to the hotel.
A carriage was approaching them quite rapidly, and Nettie suddenly, with a cry of joy, sprang forward, directly in the way of the horses. If Allan had not, at the risk of serious injury to himself, immediately sprung after her and drawn her back, she would have been run over. ”

“ A figure of Time, in a niche on one side, strikes the quarter hours from twelve to one; and four figures—Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age—pass slowly before him. In a niche, on the other side is an 133 angel turning an hour-glass. The clock is in the south transept of the cathedral.
Persons travelling abroad usually take Strasbourg on their route, to visit its cathedral,—the spire of which is the highest in the world, being four hundred and sixty feet high,—and to see its wonderful astronomical clock.
Eric and Johnny were very much pleased with the famous clock. ”

“ I have been down one hundred and fifty-six feet below the surface; but that was something very remarkable.” 80
“And did you never have any hair-breadth escapes, or thrilling adventures?” inquired Eric.
“No,” answered the diver, with a slight laugh and shrug of the shoulders, “I never did, and never knew any one who did, although I have read of many such incidents, altogether too marvellous for belief. You see,” he continued, “we know that the least carelessness would probably cost us our lives, and we are minutely accurate about all our equipments. ”

“ Upon our heads we wear a helmet, made of copper, 78 completely covering head, face, and neck, and firmly inserted between the rubber facing and the tight band about the neck of the dress, just above the shoulders. To the back of the helmet is fastened a rubber hose, attached, above the water, to the pump, which keeps the diver supplied with air ”

“ When Eric and Johnny took their stroll, it was market-day, and, even at that early hour, the streets presented a lively scene.
Carts and drays were the stalls in the open street, and people were buying and selling at a great rate. 128
The fish stalls were surrounded by storks; but the people seemed to mind them no more than the birds minded the people. These storks are great favorites with Germans. In Strasbourg they are as tame as our domestic hens, and it is very comical to see them strutting importantly about, as if they had as good a right to the sidewalk as the other citizens. ”

“ Then she lost her mother, and was for a long time a wanderer among strangers in a foreign land; and the old castle had been uninhabited, except by Gretchen, the gardener’s wife, and the owls in its dark turrets. Now, however, the long windows were thrown open to the fresh breezes and sunshine; merry laughter rang up from the garden; children’s voices echoed among the ruins, and children’s feet danced through the long corridors, keeping time to the music of the happy voices. 11
Adele and Herbert Stanley were at the castle with their young guests from New York—Eric and Nettie Hyde. ”

“ The prison is yours, and you shall have it.”
“Eric, Eric,” cried Johnny, in agony of terror, “they can’t send us to prison. We haven’t done anything. We didn’t know the money was there, or the ring. O, what shall we do? Send for papa!”
Eric’s face was very white, and his hand trembled visibly, as he wrote his uncle’s address on a card, and requested the landlord to send for him.
Count D’Orsay wished them to be at once conducted to prison: but this the landlord would not allow, and the officer declared was unnecessarily severe. ”

“ Johnny led the way to a café—that is, a coffee-house,—and here they regaled themselves with rolls and delicious coffee.
Eric was shocked to see Johnny appropriate 119 a couple of cakes and two lumps of sugar, left over from their repast, and convey them to his pocket.
“Why, Johnny!” he exclaimed, in a tone of mortification.
“They all do so,” said John, laughing. “A Frenchman thinks he has a right to everything that he pays for. Watch the others.” ”

“ I have learned many singular things since I have gone under the sea. For instance, water is a very powerful conductor of sound, much more so than air. We often blast rocks under the water—”
“How can you?” interrupted Eric. “What keeps the powder dry?”
“We have water-proof charges prepared.”
“But how can you fire them under the water?” persisted Eric.
“By electricity,” responded Mr. Lacelle. “A report of blasting rock a little distance off, will scarcely disturb us upon the land; but under the water it is very different. ”

“ The landlord of the Vyverberg was a kind-hearted German. He was quite fond of his little American guest, and readily consented to his plan for the morrow, telling Eric that 91 Monsieur Lacelle was a remarkable man, and he could not be in better hands.
“I think this is just the jolliest country, and full of the jolliest people in the world,” was Eric’s mental comment before he fell asleep that night. Indeed, there are few people more kind-hearted, thoughtful, or hospitable than the Dutch and Germans. ”

“ Eric listened, and his respect and esteem for the diver grew tenfold more. 81
Mr. Lacelle continued:—
“It is a strange business. The danger fascinates some, but the peril is never lost sight of. I put on the helmet, for the first time, more than ten years ago; and yet I never resume it without a feeling that it may be the last time I shall ever go down. Of course one has more confidence after a while; but there is something in being shut up in an armor weighed down with a hundred pounds, and knowing that a little leak in your life-pipe is your death, that no diver can get rid of. ”

“ Her stories, always sunny and healthful, touch the springs of social life and make the reader better acquainted with this great human organization of which we all form a part, and tend to bring him into more intimate sympathy with what is most pure and noble in our nature. ”