"I suppose Paul Jones was himself astonished when daylight showed the condition of his ship. I am sure we were. His ship was still on fire: ours had been a dozen times, but was out. Wherever our main battery could hit him, we had torn his ship to pieces,--knocked in and knocked out the sides. There was a complete breach from the main-mast to the stern. You could see the sky and sea through the old hulk anywhere. Indeed, the wonder was that the quarter-deck did not fall in. The ship was sinking fast, and the pumps would not free her. For us, our jib-boom had been wrenched off at the beginning; our main-mast and mizzentop fell as we struck, and at day-break the wreck was not cleared away. Jones put Lieutenant Lunt on our vessel that night, but the next day he removed all his wounded, and finally all his people, to the Serapis, and at ten the Poor Richard went to the bottom. I have always wondered that your Naval Commissioners never named another frigate for her. "And so, my dear boy, I will stop. I hope in God, it will never be your fate to see such a fight, or any fight, between an English and an American frigate. "We drifted into Holland. Our wounded men were sent into hospital in the fort of the Texel. At last we were all transferred to the French Government as prisoners, and that winter we were exchanged. The Serapis went into the French navy, and the only important result of the affair in history was that King George had to make war with Holland. For, as soon as we were taken into the Texel, the English minister claimed us of the Dutch. But the Dutch gentlemen said they were neutrals, and could not interfere in the Rebel quarrel. "Interfere or fight," said England,--and the first clause of the manifesto which makes war with Holland states this grievance, that the Dutch would not surrender us when asked for. That is the way England treats neutrals who offer hospitality to rebels." So ends the letter. I suppose the old gentleman got tired of writing. I have observed that the end of all letters is more condensed than the beginning. Mr. Weller, indeed, pronounces the "sudden pull-up" to be the especial charm of letter-writing. I had a mind to tell what the old gentleman saw of Kempenfelt and the Royal George, but this is enough. As Denis Duval scrambles across to Paul Jones's quarter-deck, at eleven o'clock of that strange moonlight night, he vanishes from history. * * * * * THE FUTURE SUMMER. Summer in all! deep summer in the pines, And summer in the music on the sands, And summer where the sea-flowers rise and fall About the gloomy foreheads of stern rocks And the green wonders of our circling sphere.