'Well, sir, you'll always find me here according to the tide; leastways unless I am ill again, as I was last year.' 'How was that?' I asked. 'Well, I don't quite know myself,' the old man answered, 'for I don't remember much about it. When they found the steps neglected, some of the wharf people came to look after me, and then they took me off to the hospital, where I was for a matter of six weeks. You see, sir, since my poor old missus died I am all alone, for my grandson went to sea; his father is a soldier; and my daughter has been in service these thirty years; so I had no one to go for a doctor or give me a drink of water.' 'Oh, that was very sad,' I exclaimed. 'Well, it was rather hard lines; but you see no one knew how I was taken; and when they found me, folks were mighty good to me, and they gave me back my place when I got well; so I ought not to complain.' The boat by which I travel was now nearing the pier, and I stepped on board, with a friendly nod to the old man, reflecting with some sympathy on the many such stories which doubtless, if we knew them, would serve to swell 'The short and simple annals of the poor.' FROTH. Children sometimes ask, and men and women need not be ashamed to ask, why is froth always white or nearly white, whatever may be the colour of the liquid underneath it? To answer the question, we shall have to determine what froth really is in itself, and how it is formed. Take a filled ale-jug, or the well-known 'pewter' of a tavern or public-house, and pour out gently into a glass: scarcely any froth is produced. Pour out the self-same liquor from the self-same vessel in a stream several inches high, and you produce a foaming 'head,' which to the eye seems to be a substance quite different from ale or beer. Open a bottle of lemonade or ginger-beer, of soda-water or seltzer-water, and pour out the contents into a glass; the formation of froth is so rapid and abundant that the glass appears full when it really contains but a small quantity of liquid. Open a bottle of Bass's ale or of Guinness's stout; the froth is still more opaque and pronounced. Look at a cup of tea or coffee soon after the sugar has been added; there will often be seen a small covering of froth on the surface, which froth, if not actually white, is much more so than the liquid beneath. Watch the movements of the paddle-wheels of a steamer; the water thrown back from them is covered with foam of dazzling whiteness, the intensity of the white increasing with the rapidity of the wheel's motion.