“Not just yet,” returned Burnham; “I have no objection to some inkling of our wonderful prize getting out--our friend here,” alluding to me, “will, no doubt, attend to that--but I certainly shall not bring him before the public in any way, nor even introduce him to our scientific men, till I have educated him to some little knowledge of our language. There will, I think, be no difficulty about that. He is evidently a man of superior intelligence, and I shall go right to work in the same way as if he was any ordinary foreigner cast upon our shores with no knowledge of our language and I myself equally ignorant of his. It is merely giving names of objects, he learning my name for the object, I his. In that manner we shall speedily arrive at a solution of the all-absorbing question who this remarkable being is whom we have rescued from the jaws of death, and who, to all intents and purposes, has been dead for--who can tell?--how many ages past.” The events I have here detailed occurred on the ninth of August last. Since that time, my friend Burnham has been enthusiastically engaged in carrying out the project which he mapped out on the day of the resuscitation of his remarkable patient and guest. His tailor was called in, and, when Mr. Kourban Balanok, as the stranger calls himself, left Burnham’s studio three days after, he did so as a nineteenth-century gentleman, and is now installed in Burnham’s house as one of the family. People may have noticed the young, handsome, and distinguished stranger to be seen occasionally walking arm-in-arm with Burnham on Kearny or Market Street, but none would guess that he had lain in the North Polar ice in the neighborhood of ten thousand years. Such is the case, however, and, as he is fast acquiring an intimate knowledge of the English language, we may confidently look forward to the appearance, in the near future, of a detailed account of the economy of the prehistoric world, and of the vast cataclysm which swamped it and left Mr. Kourban Balanok embedded in the ice. LEAVES ON THE RIVER PASIG By W. O. McGeehan The Boulong _casco_ lay on the Quiapo Market, which is on the left bank of the Pasig, just below the suspension-bridge. The Chinese junk--tradition says--was modeled after a whimsical emperor’s shoe, consequently the _cascos_ of the Philippines, being really junks without sails, are not very dainty bits of naval architecture. As a rule, they are not accorded the dignity of a name; but this one was known as the “Boulong casco,” because it was owned and manned by members of one family. Santiago Boulong was steersman, his three sons were polemen, and Simplicia, the daughter, was _el capitan_--her father said, affectionately. Their permanent home was a little _nipa_-thatch shelter at the stern of the vessel.