By degrees, from death or accident, or other causes, those above him are removed, or promoted, and he ascends the ladder to the first class, where, having passed an examination, he gets a temporary appointment as assistant officer on probation. If then satisfactory, he is confirmed in his position as officer, proceeds to head-quarters, and superintends a section of the establishment as inspector of the shops, and finally as drill instructor. [Illustration: CAPTAIN SHAW'S SANCTUM.] After this service, he is probably put under the superintendent at a station as "engineer-in-charge," as he is termed. He has, naturally, every detail of drill and "business" at his fingers' ends. The wisdom of such an arrangement is manifest. As the engineer-in-charge has been lately through the work of drill instructor, he knows exactly what is to be done, and every other officer in similar position also knows it. Thus uniformity of practice is insured. There are many other points on which information is most courteously given at head-quarters. But time presses. We accordingly take leave of our pleasant guide, and the most polite of superintendents, and, crossing the Iron Bridge once more, plunge into the teeming thoroughfares of the City, satisfied. _Scenes of the Siege of Paris._ FROM THE FRENCH OF ALPHONSE DAUDET. [ALPHONSE DAUDET, the most brilliant of French novelists alive, was born at Nîmes in 1840. His parents were not rich, and he started life by drudging as an usher. Then he resolved to break his chains, and to earn his bread at Paris with his pen. He began by painting in the _Figaro_, with great graphic power, the miseries of ushers in provincial schools. Then he turned to writing stories, with the success to which he owes his world-wide fame. Most of his novels are well known in England; but the characteristic little stories here translated will probably be new to English readers.] I.--THE BOY SPY. [Illustration: "HE WOULD TAKE HIS PLACE IN THE LONG LINE."] His name was Stenne: they called him Little Stenne. He was a thorough child of Paris; delicate-looking, pale, about ten years old--perhaps fifteen--one never can tell the ages of these scaramouches. His mother was dead; his father, an old marine, used to guard a square in the Temple quarter. Babies, nursemaids, the old women with folding-chairs, poor mothers--all the leisurely-moving world of Paris which puts itself out of the way of carriages in those gardens--knew Father Stenne, and worshipped him. People knew that under that bristling moustache, the terror of dogs and tramps, there lurked a tender, pleasant, almost a maternal smile; and that to see it one had only to say to the good man-- "How is your little boy?"