this trifling with human life to the authorities. That any one should covet the cloistral calm of a private yacht when the plain folks are so interesting and amusing is only another proof of the constant struggle of the aristocratic ideal to fasten itself upon our continent. Below there was a dining-saloon, but its seclusion was not to be preferred to an assault upon a counter presided over by one of the most remarkable young men I have ever seen. He was tall and of a slenderness, with a wonderful mane of fair hair brushed straight back from his pale brow. As he tossed sandwiches and slabs of pie to the importunate he jerked his hair into place with a magnificent fling of the head. In moments when the appeals of starving supplicants became insistent, and he was confused by the pressure for attention, he would rake his hair with his fingers, and then, wholly composed, swing round and resume the filling of orders. The young man from the check-room went to his assistance, but I felt that he resented this as an impertinence, a reflection upon his prowess. He needed no assistance; before that clamorous company he was the pattern of urbanity. His locks were his strength and his consolation; not once was his aplomb shaken, not even when a stocky gentleman fiercely demanded a whole pie! [Illustration: The Perry monument at Put-in Bay. A huge column of concrete erected in commemoration of Commodore Perry’s victory.] While Perry’s monument, a noble seamark at Put-in-Bay, is a reminder that the lakes have played their part in American history, it is at Mackinac that one experiences a sense of antiquity. The white-walled fort is a link between the oldest and the newest, and the imagination quickens at the thought of the first adventurous white man who ever braved the uncharted waters; while the eye follows the interminable line of ore barges bound for the steel-mills on the southern curve of Michigan or on the shores of Erie. Commerce in these waters began with the fur-traders travelling in canoes; then came sailing vessels carrying supplies to the new camps and settlements and returning with lumber or produce; but to-day sails are rare and the long leviathans, fascinating in their apparent unwieldiness and undeniable ugliness, are the dominant medium of transportation.