Wherefore he built the tower on the cliff,

And lit the lamp, and watched it, day and night;

So that no vessel may be wrecked there, if

The skipper does but steer her by 'Lorn Light.

AN INLAND VOYAGE.

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[ROBERT LOUIS BALFOUR STEVENSON, Cosmopolitan novelist, was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1850. Intended for an engineer, and then studying law and called to the bar, he became a traveler and story-teller, settling in Samoa in 1889 and dying there December 3, 1894. He was warmly interested in, and greatly beloved by, the Samoan natives, and "A Footnote to History" is an account of an episode in the foreign handling of their politics. His novels, stories, travel sketches, and poems all contribute to a high literary fame, as instance "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes," "The New Arabian Nights," " Kidnapped," "The Master of Ballantrae," "A Child's Garden of Verse," ""Prince Otto," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," "Catriona" (the same as "David Balfour"), and the unfinished " Weir of Hermiston," besides the "Life of Fleeming Jenkin,” and others.]

THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE.

THE rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was already down; the air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of us. Nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the Allée Verte, and on the very threshold of Brussels we were confronted by a serious difficulty. The shores were closely lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere was there any convenient landing place; nowhere so much as a stable yard to leave the canoes in for the night. We scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet, where some sorry fellows were drinking with the landlord. The landlord was pretty round with us; he knew of no coach house or stable yard, nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no mind to drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in the corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed by his hearers.

us.

Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes.

The Arethusa addressed himself to these. One of them said there would be no difficulty about a night's lodging for our boats; and the other, taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were made by Searle & Son. The name was quite an introduction. Half a dozen other young men came out of a boathouse bearing the superscription ROYAL SPOrt Nautique, and joined in the talk. They were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their discourse was interlarded with English boating terms, and the names of English boat builders and English clubs. I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land where I should have been so warmly received by the same number of people. We were English boating men, and the Belgian boating men fell upon our necks. I wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English Protestants when they came across the Channel out of great tribulation. But, after all, what religion knits people so closely as common sport?

The canoes were carried into the boathouse; they were washed down for us by the club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, and everything made as snug and tidy as a picture. And in the mean while we were led upstairs by our new-found brethren, for so more than one of them stated the relationship, and made free of their lavatory. This one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third and fourth helped us to undo our bags. And all the time such questions, such assurances of respect and sympathy! I declare I never knew what glory was before. "Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is the oldest club in Belgium."

The nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's hug of custom gradually squeezing the life out of a man's soul, had not yet, begun for these happy-star'd young Belgians. They still knew that the interest they took in their business was a trifling affair compared to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection for nautical sports. To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. Such a man may be generous; he may be honest in something more than the commercial sense; he may love his friends with an elective, personal sympathy, and not accept them as an adjunct of the station to which he has been called. He may be a man, in short, acting on his own instincts, keeping in his own shape that God made him in; and not a mere crank in the social

engine house, welded on principles that he does not understand, and for purposes that he does not care for.

For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling among boats? He must have never seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so. And for certain the one is a great deal better for the health. There should be nothing so much a man's business as his amusements. Nothing but money grubbing can be put forward to the contrary; no one but

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From Heaven,

durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying cant that would represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly toiling for mankind, and then most useful when they are most absorbed in their transactions; for the man is more important than his services. And when my Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk.

When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale to the club's prosperity, one of their number escorted us to a hotel. He would not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass of wine. Enthusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to understand why prophets were unpopular in Judæa, where they were best known. For three stricken hours did this excellent young man sit beside us to dilate on boats and boat races; and before he left, he was kind enough to order our bedroom candles.

We endeavored now and again to change the subject; but the diversion did not last a moment; the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied, answered the question, and then breasted once more into the swelling tide of his subject. I call it his subject; but I think it was he who was subjected. The Arethusa, who holds all racing as a creature of the devil, found himself in a pitiful dilemma. He durst not own his ignorance for the honor of old England, and spoke away about English clubs and English oarsmen whose fame had never before come to his ears. Several times, and, once above all, on the question of sliding seats, he was within an ace of exposure. As for the Cigarette, who has