event stirred within him until he reached the cottage. Some of the best of them would flit out of his memory, if he delayed to pen them as they arose. So he ran with all his might and main for a third of a mile, all panting with the race for time, found he had caught enough of it for pencilling on his knee a whole verse of the song. Thus he ran and wrote, each stanza costing him a race that made the hot perspiration fall upon the soiled and crumpled paper, on which he brought home to a wife prouder than himself of the song,--‘The Lion Flag of England.’” GEORGE MEDYETT GOODRIDGE The record of the adventures of this man is fully as interesting as the fictitious story of _Robinson Crusoe_ and well deserves republication. It was first published in Exeter in 1837. Two editions of a thousand copies each were exhausted, and a third was published in 1839, and a fourth in 1841. George Medyett Goodridge was born at Paignton on 22 May, 1796. At the age of thirteen he hired himself as cabin-boy on board the _Lord Cochrane_, an armed brig, stationed off Torquay to protect the fishing craft from French cruisers. From that time till 1820 he was continually at sea; in that year, on 1 May, he joined the _Princess of Wales_, a cutter, burthen seventy-five tons, bound for the South Seas after oil, fins, seal-skins, and ambergris. The arrangement was that out of every ninety skins procured, each mariner should have one; the boys proportionately less; and the officers proportionately more. Captain Veale was commander, Mazora, an Italian, mate; there were in addition three boys and ten mariners. In descending the Thames from Limehouse, a Captain Cox went on board and made a present to the crew of a Bible. “We thought little of the gift at the time,” says Goodridge, “but the sequel will show that this proved to be the most valuable of all our stores.” In passing down the Channel, the vessel was wind-bound for several days, and Goodridge was able to visit his friends at Paignton, and bid them farewell. “On the 21st, being Whit Sunday, the weather proved fine, with a breeze from the northward, we again weighed anchor and proceeded on our voyage.” [Illustration: CHARLES MEDYETT GOODRIDGE IN HIS SEAL-SKIN DRESS] On 2 November the vessel reached the Crozets, a group of five islands in the South Pacific Ocean.