[Footnote 3: The flour and biscuit which are taken out to sea in the British navy are packed in casks of wrought-iron. These were formerly painted, to prevent rust, and also to make them water-tight; but the paint was found to give a bad taste to the flour, &c., and they are now coated outside with a waterproof composition of caoutchouc, black resin, and Venice turpentine.] THE PEDESTRIAN TOUR. BY PAULINE FORSYTH. BETWEEN the projecting a scheme in the mind and its actual accomplishing, the difference is as great as that between the appearance of some Eastern city seen from a distance in the moonlight, with its picturesque domes and minarets silvered by the rays that throw over the darkest spots an unreal glamour of purity and brightness, and the same place viewed in the broad daylight, while standing in the midst of its narrow and dirty streets. It is as if we had devised some airy palace, beautiful and complete in its smallest details, and found ourselves, when going about to build it, with no materials ready but a little clay and a few stones and sticks, and those of the most crooked and unpliable materials. Few persons realize, before they are twenty-five, the resolutely prosaic actualities of the world as it is. Almost every one in his early youth is fully persuaded that he is about to perform an important part in some deeply interesting drama, and it is a hard lesson that disenchants him, and shows that he has been acting the part of Don Quixote with the world for Sancho Panzo. Frederic Lanier was a young man of nineteen. His early life had been passed in the country; but when he was fifteen he had been sent to New York to complete his education, and to reside in the mean time with his uncle, Mr. Lawrence. The very day after his arrival in the city had been marked by an important event. He had seen Adelaide Marshall, and had fallen in love with her. This love had accompanied him during the one year he had spent at the High School, and his three succeeding ones at the college. The lady was six years older than himself, but that was an additional attraction. Her stately and graceful movements, her majestic presence, and the calm and regular beauty of her face, never lost their charm to him. He was too much in love to observe that in the light of her blue eyes there was no warmth, but a cold and critical scrutiny, and that her mouth closed with a severe and slightly satirical expression. She was to him a perfect Helen.