Thomas squeezed her hand and left her, feeling rather blue. The railroad track was but a block away, and he walked over to it, not with suicidal intent, but just that he might tantalize himself with a view of the train as it sped by, which it should do in about a minute. “At any rate,” said he, “it won’t be going around that dreadful curve.” It was the last of December, and the sun had set. When he reached the track he saw, far away, a glimmer of the headlight of the five-o’clock express. Nearer and nearer it came. A moment more and it would rush by like a meteor. But it didn’t. It slackened up at the very corner on which Thomas stood, to allow an official of the road to jump off. Thomas was not slow, if he did miss trains now and then. He swung himself on to the smoker. “Go’n’ far?” asked the brakeman. “To New York,” was his reply. “You’re in luck.” “Well, I’ve not missed more than three or four trains in my life!” said Thomas; and it was strictly true. Half-past nine to the minute found him outside of the editorial rooms of the “Courier-Journal.” “Can I see Mr. Fitzgerald?” he asked of a boy who came in response to a knock. “No, sir; he went out of town yesterday. Be back to-morrow at twelve.” * * * * * “Did you get my letter already?” asked Mr. Fitzgerald of Thomas Morley, when he came to his desk next morning and found that young man waiting for him. “Yes, sir; and here I am.” “Well, sir, I like your promptness, and I’ll give you the place of a man whom we had to discharge for being too slow. You seem to have what a reporter needs most of all--the ‘get there’ quality.” “I didn’t allow any trains to pass me,” said Thomas, modestly. XXXV THE WRECK OF THE “CATAPULT” BY CL-RK R-SS-LL The sea, the sea, the open sea, The blue, the fresh, the ever free. BARRY CORNWALL. If there be those who love not the sea, with its storms, its seaweed, its sharks and shrimps and ships, this is not the story for them, and they would best weigh anchor and steer for some tale written by a landlubber and full of green meadows and trees and such tommy-rot, for this is to be chock-a-block with nautical phrases. And who am I, you ask? I am Joseph Inland, the tenth of that name. We have always lived and died here in Birmingham, and followed the trade of cutlers; but when I was a babe of one year father told mother ’twas time one member of the family followed the sea, wherever it went, and that he intended to make a sailor of me.