NOAH'S ARK MASONRY.--For the first time _Mr. Punch_, G.A.U.W.G.M., and Past Grand Everybody, met with mention of the "Royal Ark Mariners." Do they belong to an offshoot, or rather an Olive Branch, of Free-Masonry? "There are 3980 of them," says the _Daily Telegraph_. Where do they meet? In an Ark? Do they enter in pairs? Of course, NOAH himself was a Mason, seeing that aboard his own vessel _he_ was Sailing Master of the Craft. * * * * * [Illustration: "OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY!"] * * * * * THE MAN IN THE SOUTH. Having on some occasions during, I admit, the spring and autumn, spent a few days at Pinemouth on the South-Western Coast, and having had the enormous value of the place as an ultra salubrious health-restorer most energetically impressed upon me from time to time by such thoroughly disinterested persons as local members of the medical profession who, as a rule, took their holiday during the summer season, merely because they couldn't get the opportunity at any other time--a fact in itself going a long way (as they themselves did--to Switzerland and elsewhere) to prove the peculiar healthfulness of this seaside resort, and the place having been further highly recommended (by residents who, having houses to let for the summer, were quite disinterested) as quiet and delightfully refreshing, and having, in fact, heard all that could be said in favour of Pinemouth as a Summer Resort by those who had only the welfare of their dear friends at heart (and if such interest did put a little ready capital in their pockets through taking their dear friends' houses--where is the harm?), I, ROBINSON CRUSOE, Jun., "The Man of the First of August" (that being the beginning of my tenancy) determined on trying Pinemouth (a name that I find spelt with unpardonable familiarity in some local guide-books, thus--"P'm'th"--an abbreviation leaving the name scarcely a shred of its original character), and when I say so boldly, "_I_ determined," any other Paterfamilias will at once know what _that_ means. [Illustration: Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Junior, deciding on where to spend his few weeks' holiday.] Of course, directly "P'm'th" was decided upon, some of our friends shook their heads, others observed dubiously that "they _had_ heard it wasn't such a _very_ bad place in August," while the majority bade me farewell with forced cheeriness, expressed the heartiest hopes for our health and happiness in the new climate we were going to try, and in a general way our excellent friends and acquaintances were almost as enthusiastic and hopeful on the score of our enjoying ourselves and benefiting by the change, as were the American acquaintances of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ and _Mark Tapley_ when those two emigrants were starting for the great dismal swamp.