‘There, there! I don’t expect any speech in reply,’ she laughed. ‘You and Sarah settle it to-night, and I’ll advertise for twelve boarders straight away, I’ll try to be a model mother-in-law. I believe I’m good-tempered and kind-hearted, though I did once follow a young man two hundred miles and shoot off the top of his head for agreeing to marry my daughter and then quitting the county.’ She patted him on the head and sailed out. And now the young man wants advice. He wants to know whether he had better get in the way of a locomotive or slide off the wharf. If ever a young bachelor was ‘sold,’ Sarah’s young man was in that predicament. ELEPHANT GOSSIP FROM RANGOON. We have much pleasure in laying before our readers the following interesting particulars regarding the elephant, and the way in which the physical strength of that sagacious animal is turned to account in the timber-trade of Rangoon. The notes are contained in a letter from a resident in that town to his brother in England, who has kindly placed it at our disposal. After describing some phases of every-day social life, the writer thus proceeds: ‘The elephants I go daily to see are beauties, fine powerful well-trained animals, and strange to say, the _mahout_ (driver) of one of them is an old servant of my own. It is both interesting and amusing to watch them working the timber. The government have nine elephants employed at the depôt, and there are other animals belonging to natives at work there also. I often take my seat on a teak-log, picking out the cleanest and softest for the purpose, light a cheroot, and watch the performance. Elephants are pretty much like men; I don’t mean in personal appearance, but in character. I can pick out “characters I have met” quite easily among the group of sixteen or eighteen all working there together sometimes. There are willing workers, and there are skulkers; there are gentle tempers, and there are others “as dour as a door-nail.” Some of them will drag a log two tons in weight without a groan; while others, equally powerful but less willing, will make a dreadful fuss over a stick that is, comparatively speaking, nothing. ‘There are a good many female elephants employed. Some belong to the government; but most of them are owned by Karens, who bring them in from the jungle when work is obtainable. They are not so powerful as the males; and the want of tusks is rather against them, because they have to do the pushing or “ounging” part of the work, as the natives call it, with their trunks. These they roll up in a coil, and just at the place where the trunk and the head unite, they press against the log and roll it over.