I asked her the other day what she liked best of all she saw in Europe.

or to Master Heinecker; but there was one | Europe. One of these, under the modern hotthing he could understand, and that was the house plan of mental culture, has grown to be unguarded admiration of his mother; not her such an intelligent child, such a little lady! appreciation and love-those would have sunk into his child-soul like nourishing dews-but the admiration that, falling too often on a young nature, blights it, or forces it to a premature and unnatural growth.

"Oh, the art-galleries, of course," she replied, demurely; “everybody likes those best." Poor child! Remembering her, with what

Philly knows little songs, and long ago he comfort I recall a recent morning spent with could say: the two other little travelers.

"Who comes here? A grenadier!" etc.;

but we have always been very careful how and when we brought forward these accomplishments. He knows that he can please us immensely by an exercise of all dramatic and musical gifts. Before he grew so old and wise he believed that he frightened us terribly when, in saying that thrilling nursery lyric, he roared forth, “A granny-deer!" but now he just knows we enjoy his performances as he does ours, and we always make a point of giving a fair exchange in such entertainments.

"So you have been to Europe," I said. "Now, Hal, tell me what place did you like best of all ?"

"Don't know," said Hal; "guess I liked Munich best, cos they had the most sogers there."

"And I think I liked Venice," put in wee, bright-eyed May; "because it was there that mamma bought me this sweet little doll" (taking it up caressingly); "her name's Katie; I must finish putting on her clothes; it's very late in the morning for dolly not to be all washed and dressed, I think. Ab," she continued, plaintively, as she attempted to pin dolly's skirt, "this band is too big. Katie used to just fit it, but she's real thin now; she's lost so much saw-dust!"

Happy little May! Her days are fresh and

To be sure, if Philly, instead of being the simple, everyday child that he is, had proved to be an infant Mozart, with God-given genius shining from his eyes and twitching his restless little fingers, of course we should feel in duty bound to lift him up to the piano-stool.simple and beautiful, because she is allowed to We would do this reverently, I think, and with be a child. Whatever training is expended joyful wonder-glad, too, that the progress of upon her is so loving and wise that she grows science and the arts had prepared for our dear naturally into all that can be rationally exboy something better than a clavichord. We pected of a child of her age. Her goodness might even encourage him to put his music is the goodness of a warm-hearted, unpervertupon paper, if his overflowing soul required ed little girl, who loves the dear God already that form of expression. Or, premising that "for making father and mother and every we had seen marvelous cows, elephants, and thing," but who has no startling Sunday-school dogs chalked on the nursery doors or on Phil-predilections, suggestive of an early transplantly's one-eyed and tailless hobby-horse, or if, ing. Her politeness comes from no formal when he was six years old, another Lady Ken-schooling, but is the simple outgrowth of the yon had walked in, and our precious little one "love one another" that comes of being loved had in half an hour drawn an excellent por--not of being doted upon, but of being loved trait of her, after the manner of the six-year- as God intended she should be. old Thomas Lawrence, does any one suppose that the maternal grasp would have robbed our boy's right hand of its cunning?

But he's not a Mozart. He's not any thing in particular, though he's every thing to us. He simply represents "a large and growing class of the community," as the newspapers say, and so his case is worthy of consideration. He's the average child (ah, how it hurts my motherly heart to write that, for it doesn't believe a word of it, though I do!), and, being the average child, we may all learn a lesson from him for the benefit of the present race of little ones.

We can resolve that for him all precocious development is hurtful: premature ability, premature politeness, premature pleasures, premature goodness even-Heaven shield him from them all! Heaven shield him and every other child from aught that will stiffen them too soon into little men and women!

I know three little tots, five and six years old, who lately have returned from a visit to

May's pretty ways are, in her presence, never made the subject of admiring comment; nor are her sweet, childish sayings echoed by the mountains of appreciation by which children among the comfortable classes are so apt to be surrounded. If she asks a question it is thoughtfully answered; and if she makes any of those sweet, childish blunders in speech or conduct that often are the charm of our homes, they either are apparently not noticed at all at the time, or they are gently and cheerfully corrected. But never are they met by that domestic dyke, in the form of a general laugh or an encouraging deception, which invariably sends them back upon the child in an overflow of pain or bewilderment.

The fondest of us parents often are the most cruel to our children. This comes from selfishly regarding them as an especial personal gift to ourselves-something to delight and amuse us— while at the same time we forget that if they are given to us, just as surely are we given to them.

Mothers, when in your heart rises that first blessed thought, God has given to me a child!

He has chosen me to be thy mo

Then with His help shall your little one be reared; no selfish fondness or pride shall rob it of its just rights; not a tithe shall be taken from its innocent, sweet babyhood, from its growing infancy, its blithesome childhood. Sufficient unto each day shall be its daily progress. Vanity shall not warp it, nor school-books crush, nor undue stimulus wrong it of its fair and just proportions.

then and there say: "Oh child! He has given | how inadequate the weight of the lead at the me to thee. end of a sounding-line must be to its task of ther!" continuing to draw down the line after the part submerged gets to be four or five miles longfor that is the depth which the water attains in some parts of the Atlantic Ocean. When the weight is first thrown over the gunwale of the boat occupied by the party who have the operation in charge the line begins to run out quite rapidly; but it goes more and more slowly as the depth, and consequently the increasing friction resulting from the increasing length of the portion submerged, grow greater, until at length, after some hours-for of course it takes hours for such a traveler as the sinking weight to make a journey of five miles-the line creeps over the gunwale so slowly that those in charge are long in uncertainty whether the weight has reached the bottom or not. A very gentle undercurrent in the water, flowing

When you say, with the woman of old, "Lo, I have given a man unto the world!" be guarded lest you cheat it and Heaven too, by not allowing that man first to be, in the fullest sense, a little child.

DEEP-SEA SOUNDING.

ONE might suppose that it would be the in a different direction from that of the surface,

easiest thing imaginable to determine the depth of water by letting down a heavy weight to the bottom, by means of a line, and then measuring the length of the line.

Whether it is an easy thing or not to do this depends upon the depth of the water. If the water is shallow, it is a very easy thing. If the water is deep, instead of being an easy thing it proves to be exceedingly difficult.

There are two great difficulties to be encountered. One is to get the weight down to the bottom. The second, which is still greater than the first, is to get it up again, so as to measure the line. Both these difficulties arise from the enormous magnitude which the retarding force, resulting from the friction of the line through the water, acquires when the line has a length of some miles.

We feel so little resistance when we move the hand, or any other small object, through water, that it is difficult for us to understand how vast this resistance can become when the surfaces are extended.

People who have made voyages at sea are often surprised, when the "log" is thrown, to see how many men are required, and how great is the apparent exertion which they have to make, in drawing in again the line, thin and slender as it is. Although the line used on such occasions is only a hundred fathoms or thereabout in length, and the little quadrant called the log is so far detached from its hold at the end of it as to offer the least possible resistance, it requires the united strength of several men, following each other along the deck, with the line passing over their shoulders, to overcome the simple resistance which the friction of the line, in being drawn through the water, offers to its return to the ship.

or even with greater force in the same direction, would drift the line enough to cause it to continue running off the reel long after the weight was at rest on the bottom.

These difficulties for a long time prevented the making of any reliable soundings at great depths. Some advantage was gained by improvements in the manufacture of the line employed, so as to obtain the greatest strength with the least thickness, and to make the specific gravity of it as nearly as possible that of the water.

For if the specific gravity were even only a little greater than that of the water, the weight of the line, when a great length was out, might be sufficient to continue to draw it off the reel without any aid from the lead at all, and without any drift, so that the line might continue to run out long after the lead had reached the bottom.

On the other hand, if the specific gravity of the line were somewhat less than that of the water, then it would have a certain buoyancy, the amount of which might become so great, after a considerable length had run out, as to float the lead and prevent its ever reaching the bottom at all.

For

It was not possible under the old methods to diminish the difficulty of taking deep soundings by increasing the weight of the plummet. although this would facilitate the work of getting the line down, it would in a still greater proportion impede that of drawing it up again.

The invention of Mr. Brooke, an officer of the American navy, very ingeniously evades this dilemma, by making the weight extremely heavy, for the purpose of securing a prompt descent, and then, when it gets to the bottom, leaving it there, and drawing up the line alone. Not entirely alone, however, for a portion of the iron which forms the descending weight is made to detach itself from the rest, and comes up with the line, bringing with it a specimen of the sand, mud, or other formation constitut

Any one who has observed this operation at sea, and has noticed how much strength it requires on the part of the seamen to draw the log-line on board again at the end of it, when the line is after all not more than a quarter of a mile in length, will not be surprised to learning the bottom.

are held firmly, by their loops, upon the lower branches. But as soon as the lower end of the bar touches bottom the line slackens, and then the weight of the ball draws the branches down and lets the loop slip off, as shown in Figure 2. The round rod is now liberated, and can be drawn out from the perforation in the ball and brought to the surface, as shown in Figure 3.

The construction and operation of the ap-| right position, and the wires of the supporter paratus are shown in the engraving. The instrument consists essentially of a heavy iron ball, with a cylindrical iron bar passing loosely through the centre of it. These are shown, in the position which they occupy while descending, in the central figure-the ball marked 1, being perforated to allow the round bar A to pass through it. The ball fits loosely to the bar, but it is kept in its place during the descent by the iron supporter B, suspended by wires from above. The form of this supporter is shown more distinctly below.

At the upper end of the bar, at C, are two arms turning loosely on pivots. These arms are each divided above into two short branches, -the wires which come up from the supporter of the ball being hooked upon the lower pair, while the line, made double by a division at its lower end, is attached to the upper pair.

There is a hollow in the lower end of the round bar, which is nearly filled with some soft adhesive substance, by means of which specimens of the sand or mud, and sometimes minute shells, are brought up-sufficient to give the observer some idea of the character of the bottom.

This kind of sounding apparatus has, moreover, this great advantage over the old mode, namely, that if the bar comes up without the ball it is certain that the bottom was actually reached, a fact which it was very difficult to ascertain, in case of very deep water, by a sim

The apparatus being thus arranged, the ball is kept in its place upon the round bar so long as the weight hangs upon the line, for while it so hangs the branches are kept in a nearly up-ple lead and line.

Editor's Easy Chair.

On the earliest of the really spring-like morn

ings as the Easy Chair turned into Church Street it could not help perceiving that in some romantic ways the New Yorker has the advantage of the Londoner and the Parisian. Church Street does not, indeed, seem at the first mention to be a promising domain of romance, nor a fond haunt of the Muses. Indeed, it must not be denied that it has an unsavory name; and when the city loiterer recalls Wapping, or a May morning on the Seine quais, he will smile at Church Street as a field of romance, and the Easy Chair grants him absolution. London, perhaps, does not strike the American imagination, or let us more truly say, the imagination of the traveling American, as a romantic city. That citizen of the world reserves himself for Venice, Constantinople, Grand Cairo. Yet if after his arrival he will buy Peter Cunningham's "Hand-book for London" at the nearest book-store, and turn its pages slowly, he will discover that for him, an American, he is in a very romantic city indeed. Mr. Hepworth Dixon's "Tower of London" will show him how copious a sermon may be preached from one romantic text. Of course he can be expected to have no feeling but pity for the unfortunates who fill the streets, and whose fate it was to be born Britishers. Yet let him reflect that it was not their fault, and that except for that precise unhappy fact of being Britishers, which causes all the mischief, their parents too would have lived elsewhere.

The reply seems to be beating out a jest very thin; but gradually the Easy Chair contrives to explain.

The movement of life in New York is so rapid, fashion and trade sweep from one point to another with such impetuosity, that the romance of changed interest can be enjoyed in the same spot twice or thrice in a lifetime. In older cities in Paris, in London-it is not the individual experience, but history only, that covers the change. The gentlemen and dames of the Louis Quinze era do not moralize over the Place from which the glory has departed, but only their descendants. The change is so gradual that it is not within their personal experience. It is a tide that rises and falls in sixscore years, not in six hours. But the fortunate New Yorker has his romance making for him while he sleeps. The sorry streets of to-day will disappear within a dozen years, and the instant they are gone, or seem just at the moment of the final lapse, they have passed into the realm of romance.

Here is Church Street, for instance. It is not very long, and you turn into it from Fulton or from Canal. So turned the Easy Chair, and there was the long, narrow vista, walled by lofty buildings, the spacious houses of trade, built yesThen the American citizen of the world, pity- terday, piled with dry-goods, bold with prospering England, will cross to France, to another ous newness, but instantly suggesting the street country, a new world, and in Paris will breathe of palaces in Genoa. And a few rods off some more freely as being at last in the metropolis of old Knickerbocker is gravely stalking_down the globe-always excepting New York, Philadel- Broadway, who has not turned aside into Church phia, Boston, Cincinnati, or Chicago, as the case Street for many a year, and who supposes Church may be. If he opens "Galignani's Guide," the Street is still a place not to be named, an unexcellent and well-informed traveler will imme-speakable Gehenna. So it was a dozen years ago. diately discover that he is in another romantic city, and that there is something more to see and consider than the bal d'opera and the Château Rouge; and if some Easy Chair, accidentally encountered straying along the Boulevards, or seated at the door of a café, should chance to ask whether the well-informed traveler had ever taken a romantic turn in Church Street, New York, he would be rewarded with a smile of encouragement for his admirable humor. By-and-by, after the coffee was drunk and the pipe smoked out, the Easy Chair and his approving Mentor would perhaps stroll about the old city until they came, far away from the haunts of to-day, to the respectable old Place Louis Quinze. It is always And now it is a double range of stately buildan attractive spot for that well-informed traveler.ing, symmetrical, massive. Horse-cars struggle He looks at it with a pensive emotion, and he turns warmly to the Easy Chair and says:

"How delightful this is! Here dwelt the noblesse! This was the Fifth Avenue-what do I say?-the Murray Hill of old Paris! And now all is gone! Fashion is an emigré. Inquire in the Faubourg St. Germain. What a pity we have nothing of this kind in America!"

"But we have," replies the Easy Chair. The incredulous well-informed traveler again smiles a mild, melancholy smile at the inscrutable methods of Providence, which has provided no

Once also it was the Black Broadway. It was a kind of voluntary Ghetto of the colored people. Then again it was an offshoot of the Five Points. There were low ranges of dingy buildings. Dirty men and women slouched on the walk and lounged out of the windows, and their idle, ribald laughter echoed along the street that few carriages traversed. Dens of every kind were just around every corner. Slatternly women emptied slops upon the pavement, and the stench was perpetual. Dirty little children screamed and played, and sickly babes squalled unheeded. It was a street fallen out of Hogarth; the street of worst repute in the city.

on it with the light carts of the dry-goods dealers, with the slow, enormous teams that shake the ground. At every corner there is an inextricable snarl of wagons, and porters are heaving boxes, and young clerks are directing, and huge windows are filled with huge pattern-cards, so that the narrow way is tapestried. "Look out, there!" cries a porter-compelling clerk to the Easy Chair, which smiles to reflect that only yesterday it was in Exchange Place, and Pearl Street, and elsewhere that the peremptory youth was ordering him to mind his eye. And if the employer

who now sits in that spacious office opposite had known that his clerk was familiar with Church Street, he would have warned him of the gates of destruction, and have admonished him that Church Street, though a narrow street, was a broad way. The people that push and hurry and skip along in this busy avenue are alert and well-dressed. The slouchers and loungers, the old slatterns with the slop-pails, the fat, frouzy, jolly, dirty women with bare red arms and loud voices, the sneaks, and thieves, and the unclean groups at the grogshop-where are they? No sneaks now-no thieves: honorable gentlemen with clean collars every where. What a consolation! As you watch the passers closely, as you read the signs, it occurs to you that the population, with the universal tendency in our mental and spiritual habit that Matthew Arnold sparklingly deplores, is clearly Hebraized. Here, where this especially fine warehouse or handsome shop stands, stood the French church. It has jumped up town a few miles. Here was the church of Dr. Potts. Could you believe that the people who go to meeting in the smug, brown little edifice in an ivy mantle at the corner of University Place and Tenth Street, which probably seems to the young clerk coeval with the city, day before yesterday, as it were, came down here among the merchants? Then they came once a week for an hour or two-now they come all the time, except for that hour or two. What did you say was the name of the deity to whom these temples are dedicated?

a building, that sits and snarls impotent over the savagery departed. And there is one tall rookery still-a tenement-house, with a system of fire-escapes in front; and the slattern slopping at the curb as in the ancient day; and a cooper's shop, and a blacksmith's, and one, two, threehow many whisky shops? But they are all faint and feeble and submerged in the lofty buildings, and to-morrow all trace of them will be gone. And then who will remember the murder? The mysterious, awful, romantic murder. The murder that filled all the newspapers and fed speculation at all the corner groggeries and in all offices. The murder that was done into a romance, and of which the hero, that is the murderer, was acquitted after one of the famous eloquent criminal appeals which are so effective because their power is measured by human life. And this hero occasionally reappears in the newspapers even to this day. Somebody writes from a remote somewhere that on a steamer far away a mysterious man, after much mysterious conduct, imparts the awful truth that he is the hero. Does he sometimes return to this spot? Does he look at the site of the house where the deed was done? Does he appear in the guise of a merchant, a jobber, a retailer from that remote southwestern somewhere, and higgle and chaffer in the noble warehouse on the very site of the wretched building where he murdered his mistress? Good Heavens! do you see that man of about those years, looking about as if to find a sign or a number (as if he didn't know the very place! as if it were not burned and cut into his heart and conscience!)? Do you think it could possibly be he, or is it, after all, only the honest Timothy Tape, the modest retailer from Skowhegan or Palmyra? The typhus-fever used to rage here; the cholera was fearful. The Sanitary Reports say that there were always cases of the worst diseases to be found here. The city missionaries also used to find their worst cases here too; and now-what cleanliness of collar, what modishness of coat! No more sin-what a consolation!

And at this corner-why, if it were an April thicket it could not more sweetly bubble with song, only this music is the spirit ditty of no tone-here was the old National Theatre. Do you see that very respectable old gentleman in the office who carries an ostrich egg in his hat? -for so his grandchildren describe grandpapa's baldness. He sits reading the paper, and is presently going down to the bank of which he is a director, and of which he seems always to those grandchildren to smell, so tenacious is the peculiar odor of a bank; that is the very gentle- And so, as the Easy Chair strolled along, man who in the temple of the Drama upon this bumped and hustled and severely looked upon spot used to lead the loud applause, and at whom by the eager throng in the narrow street, more in his buckish costume of those merry days and radically reconstructed than any doubtful State, nights, the lovely Shirreff herself used to level her it could not help feeling that London with her eyes and her voice as she trilled, "Oh whistle Majesty's Tower, and Paris with her deserted and I'll come to you, my lad." Can you imagine Place Louis Quinze, are not the only romantic that excellent grandparent kissing his hand rap-cities in the world, and that a city of such rapid turously to the retiring prima donna, going off to sup at the Café de l'Independence, and hieing home at two in the morning, waking the echoes of Murray Street with a reproduction of that arch song, followed by a loud whistle to prove whether that vision of delight really will come to him, and bringing only the gruff Charley, obese guardian of the night? Will you find in your famous Place Louis Quinze any roisterer of the regency grown bald and careful of his diet?

Here is one wall which survives from the prehistoric days of thirty years ago-it is the rear wall of the old hospital, that blessed green spot in the midst of the city, which is to be green no more, but will be soon piled with more palaces. And opposite this wall is a short street running from Church to West Broadway. A very few years ago this was one of the worst of city slums. \t the corner of West Broadway a wooden buildstill remains-a sullen, sickly, defiant cur of

and incessant change as New York offers even some poetic aspects which its elder sisters want. The Easy Chair has pleaded formerly for some respect toward old historic buildings, like the old State House in Boston, for instance, and has been indignantly laughed at for its pains. It will not deny that, unabashed by such laughter, it contemplates the old Walton House with satisfaction. It repairs, also, to the corner of Broad and Pearl streets, and, reflecting upon General Washington's parting with his officers, turns its eyes toward Wall Street and beholds the Grecian temple which has taken the place of the old Hall upon whose balcony the first predecessor of President Grant was inaugurated. But the romance of Church Street is of another kind. It is the romance of striking and sudden change merely, not of historic interest, nor of personal association. Perhaps the gentle reader may not find it when he goes there. Then let him carry it.