ribly the natives of Spain and Italy must suffer from bad climate! What a pity it is Finland is not large enough to accommodate the whole human race." With such thoughts as these I amused myself for some time, soothed and charmed by the pleasant sea-breeze and the music of the waves upon the rocks. The air was deliciously pure, and the odor of the sea-weeds had something in it so healthful and inspiring that I was insensibly carried back to by-gone days. How short a time it seemed since I was a wanderer upon the rock-bound shores of Juan Fernandez, yet how many strange scenes I had passed through since then-how much of the world I had seen, with its toils, and troubles, and vicissitudes! Here I was now, after years of travel in every clime, among the various nations of the earth, sitting solitary and alone upon an isolated rock on the shores of Finland! Whither was I going? What was the object? Where was the result? When was it to end? Years were creeping over me; I was no longer in the heyday of youth, yet the vague aspirations of boyhood still clung to me— the insatiable craving to see more and more of the world -the undefined hope that I would yet live to be cast away upon a desolate island, and become a worthy disciple of the immortal Robinson Crusoe! Ah me! What a lonesome feeling it is to be a visionary, enthusiastic boy all one's life, in this practical world of dollars and cents, where other boys are men, and men forget that they ever were young! But this, you say, is all sentimental nonsense. Of course it is. I admit the full folly of such thoughts. It would be a pitiable spectacle indeed to see every body inspired by the vagabond spirit of Robinson Crusoe. No doubt, if you were sitting upon a rock on the Gulf of Finland, my respected Californian friend, you would be hammering off the croppings and trying to discover the indications. You consider that the true philosophy of life-to dig, and delve, and burrow in the ground, and get gold and silver out of it, and suffer rheumatism in your bones and cramps in your

stomach, and wear out your life in a practical way, while we visionaries are dreaming sentimental nonsense! But, after all, does the one pay any better than the other in the long run? Will gold or silver make you see farther into a millstone, or give you a better appetite, or put youth and health into your veins, or cause you to sleep more soundly of nights, or prolong your life to an indefinite period beyond the span allotted to the average of mankind? Will you never be convinced of the truth of these inspired words, which can not be repeated too often: As you brought nothing into the world, so you can take nothing out of it?

Come, then, let us be young again, and dash into the blue waters of Finland, and buffet the sparkling brine as it seethes and boils over the rocks! Away with your gold and your silver, and your toils and cares, and let us play Robinson Crusoe and Friday here in this solitary little glen, where " our right there is none to dispute"unless it may be the Czar of Russia. Off with your shirt, your boots, your drawers, your all, and be for once a genuine savage-be my man Friday, and I'll teach you how to enjoy life. Ye gods! doesn't it feel fine—that plunge in the foaming brine! Why, you look like a boiled lobster already; the glow of health is all over you; your eyes sparkle, your skin glistens; you shoot out the salt sea-spray from your nostrils in a manner that would surprise any porpoise; you whoop and you yell like a young devil let loose! Never in the world would I take you to be a hard, money-making, lucre-loving man! Why, my dear Friday, you are a perfect jewel of a savage! I didn't know it was you, and doubt if you knew it yourself! Isn't it glorious? I feel a thousand years younger! Don't you hear me singing,

"Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe!

Tinky ting tang, tinky ting tang,

Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe !"

But the water is rather fresh-considering how much salt there is in it. We had better take a race over the

rocks. Run, Friday, for your life. If I catch you, overboard you go into the sea again. Run, you savage, run! Voices? you say, human voices?

Great heavens! Where are you, Friday? Gone! disappeared behind that projecting ledge of rocks. And here am I, all alone, up to my arm-pits in the water, with a group of Finnish ladies standing there, not a hundred yards off, looking at me!-ay, gazing steadfastly at me, and, what is worse, splitting their sides laughing at my confusion! What in the world is to be done? The water seems to be growing colder and colder. I am chilled through. My jaws begin to chatter. Suppose a shark should seize me by the leg-or a sudden and violent cramp should take possession of me? My gracious! what are those women doing now? Actually seating themselves on the rocks, within ten steps of my clothes, and spreading several packages of bread, cheese, and cakes around them! They are going to enjoy a picnic while I enjoy my bath! I hear their merry voices; I can imagine the general drift of their jokes. How innocently they eat, and drink, and laugh. Possibly they take me for a seal or a walrus! Certainly nothing is visible but my head, on the crown of which, I regret to say, is a bald spot about the size of your hand. It may be very funny to see it dodging up and down among the breakers-but I can't stand it much longer. Already the spray has wellnigh strangled me; I shiver all over; a horrible presentiment is uppermost in my mind that polypi, and sea-leeches, and shiny jelly-fish are fastening their suckers upon my legs; I jump, and kick, and plunge in an agony of apprehension, while those fair creatures on the rock imagine, no doubt, that I am disporting myself in sheer exuberance of joy. If they only knew that I had been full half an hour in the water before they appeared, there might be some hope of a release; but that does not seem to have entered their heads.

Never in all my experience, reader, was I in such a predicament. This is no fancy sketch. It is true, every

word of it. Had the picnickers been old ladies, I might have shut my eyes, and made a break out of the water for my clothes; but three of them, at least, were young, and, worse than that, very pretty! The courage for so daring and monstrous an act was not in me. I felt that it would be easier to die; and yet to die in this way is pretty hard when it comes to a practical test. What the deuce was to be done? I could not speak a word of Finnish, otherwise I might have implored them to retire a few hundred yards and let me get my clothes. With a shirt, or even a pocket-handkerchief, I might have charged upon the enemy; but I had nothing-not even a hat-as a shield against the battery of sparkling eyes that bore down upon me! A thousand expedients flashed through my mind in the extremity of my sufferings. I would slip out of the water on all-fours, and creep over the rocks like a seal, but that would be an extremely ungraceful way of approaching a bevy of strange ladies. Then it occurred to me if I could get hold of a bunch of sea-weeds, it might serve as a temporary substitute for a costume; but the weeds had all drifted away by this time, and not a patch was in sight. Even a large oystershell might have afforded some assistance; but who ever heard of oyster-shells in the Gulf of Finland? Nothing remained save to dive down and seize a big rock, detach it from the bottom, and, holding it up before me, make a break for the pile of clothes; yet when I came to consider the preposterous spectacle that a middle-aged man would present in a state of nudity charging full tilt upon a party of ladies, with a big rock in his hands and a gleam of desperation in his eye, the idea seemed too monstrous to be entertained, and I was forced to give it up. The difficulty was becoming really serious. Doubtless it appears very funny to my California friends, but I can assure them it was pretty near death to me. I would have given ten dollars for the poorest cotton shirt that was ever dealt out by an Indian agent to a Reservation Digger; nay, transparent as the blankets are, I

might have made one serve my purpose by doubling it three or four times and holding it up in front.

All this, however, though very well in its way, did not relieve me from my embarrassing predicament. Something must be done, and that very speedily. I was rapidly wilting under the chilling influence of the water. Ten minutes more would render me a fit subject for a coroner's inquest. I saw but one alternative: to work my course a few hundred yards up the shore, and then creep out the best way I could, and run for my life till I found some friendly nook among the rocks in which I could conceal myself till these fair Finns took a notion to depart.

Acting upon this idea, I ducked down as low as possible, and crept over the jagged and slippery rocks, in mortal dread all the time that some receding wave would leave me a dripping spectacle for these fair damsels to laugh at; till, bruised and scarified beyond farther endurance, I worked my way to a landing-place, where I paused in a recumbent position-that is to say, on allfours to take an observation. They must have perceived something ludicrous in my attitude. A wild scream of laughter saluted my ears. I could stand no more. What little warmth was left in my blood forced itself into my head and face as I sprang to my feet. With a groan of shame and mortification, I took to my heels; and never before, so help me Jupiter! did I run so fast in my life. Scream after scream of laughter followed me! It is impossible for me to conjecture how I looked, but I felt dreadfully destitute of sail as I scudded over the rough pathway that wound around the shore. Blushing, panting, and utterly overwhelmed with conflicting emotions of modesty and despair, I darted behind the friendly shelter of a rock, and inwardly resolved that if ever I went bathing in Finland again, I would at least perform my ablutions in a more appropriate costume than Nature had bestowed upon me.

The next question was, how long were these people