not mention such things, were it not for the baneful effects they had on my young mind at the time, and the blight their impression cast on my riper years. "As I grew up my tasks lessened, but the same restraint continued. My brother and sister died young, and my mother when I was nineteen years of age. Even after my father had made me a partner in his business, he still looked upon me as a child. From his austerity he had never gained my love; and I obeyed him only as a soldier does his commander. To the world I appeared as religious an attendant of the church as he was; but, alas! my heart was not there; I was almost, if not wholly, a sceptic, for I was not the least under the influence of religion. respectable, and I saw no other way of his doing so but by my advancing him money to buy clothes. To break upon my hoard was to me a matter of serious consideration; it was like upsetting my own aims. I thought over all the instances I had ever heard of money lent and never repaid; and an old rhyme ran strong in my mind "I once had money and a friend, I lent my money to my friend, I'd keep my money to myself, And lose my friend no more." I had almost hardened my heart, and was humming the misanthropic words when Kennedy came into my room; but his melancholy, heart-broken look dissolved at once my prudent resolves. I handed him the letter, and, as he read it, the tears started into his eyes; he took my hand and actually kissed it; but soon the glow of hope gradually faded from his face, and his eyes wandered over his threadbare dress, and his almost japanned hat which he had laid upon At my father's death I was left my own master, and dreams of coming enjoyment and freedom floated before me. I was now sole owner of a thriving business, with a few hundreds in the bank; and I did not all at once throw off the mask, for the restraint I had been reared under acted as a check for some time, so that it was not without many severe struggles I fell away altogether. But fall I did. Gradually my Sunday relaxations, as my companions and I called them, began to encroach on my week-days; I employed my table. others to do for me what I ought to have done Do not be cast down, Kennedy,” said I, for myself; my business began to decline;"I did not recommend you without being and my income was unable to support my able to carry you through; and as to your extravagance. The money my father had appearance, I will lend you as much as will left was all spent; bills came upon me I could not meet; my place of business was shut up by my extravagance and carelessness. My creditors found it was more through my own mismanagement than any necessity that my affairs were so involved; but I was sequestrated, and a trustee appointed who, after winding up my affairs, paid my creditors in full, and handed me a small sum. Upon this, by dint of economy, I have subsisted ever since; but all is now gone, and I am plunged in want and degradation." make that respectable: I know you will repay me as soon as you can." He uttered no word- he made no promise — but I felt a warm tear drop upon my hand, which he still held in his the pleasure I felt was worth all I had in the bank. How strange are the turns of fortune! Charlie Graham, the poor gatherer, lending money to a rich merchant's son! Next day, I got him equipped, and he set off in the stage-coach to present himself to Edwards, the old poor-house orphan. I had the pleasure to hear, in a day or two, that he was engaged; and in a few months after, I received a letter from Edwards, thanking me for having recommended Kennedy to him, who before this time had repaid me the money I had advanced. When Kennedy and I parted for the night, I began to turn over in my mind how I could be of service to him, for he had introduced me to arithmetic, and I was now doing questions in Practice under his teaching. The next morning I wrote to my friend Edwards in Kennedy's behalf, giving an outline of his history, and saying all I could in his favor; and on the following evening, when I came home, I received an answer, stating that he would give him a trial, if his appearance pleased him, as the firm at that time required a clerk. His appearance! there was the rub, for it was shabby-genteel; and I actually hesitated as to whether I should tell him what I had done. For my own credit, after what I had said, he must at least appear my store From the period Mr. Ross had taken me under his charge, I had been prosperous and happy. I was now in my twenty-fifth year, and by steadily adhering to my rule of economy, I was gradually nearing the aim of my ambition-to have one hundred pounds in the bank, and all my own. While comfortably situated, I never changed my lodgings, and I still wrought in Mr. Ross' shop. But the cares of riches were beginning to assail me. How could I quicken the increase of -how turn my wealth to the best LIFE'S UNDERCURRENT. advantage? I sometimes lost an hour or two of sleep in ruminating on this subject. firms in New York, with whom we have had One of my fellow-lodgers was from the country, steady, sober, and saving like myself, without being penurious; he was clerk in a warehouse for which I had long wrought, and the partners of which were reported to be very wealthy. One evening I spoke to him on the subject which occupied my thoughts, considering him well qualified to When I mentioned the give me advice. amount of my fortune, he told me: "It is far too small a sum to commence with on a scale to pay well, and you shall be plunged into all the miseries of a poor master without capital. I myself," he continued, "have saved a greater sum than you, and I get better interest, for I receive five per cent.' I felt stunned and bewildered this was I inquired where. He told me his employers gave that for money on loan, and that all his was in their hands: and he had no doubt a turn in my affairs I had never dreamed of. they would give me the same for mine. The We parted for the night, he leaving me in temptation was great, and I thought not of the most uneasy frame of mind I had ever the risk, for they were reputed wealthy. been in. When I had nothing to lose, I (One or two banks had stopped payment cared not for to-morrow; to-morrow was about this time, and those who had money now a day of immense importance to me. I in others were very uneasy, and many withdrawing it.) Next forenoon, I went and offered what I had in the bank to the company on loan, at five per cent.; it was accepted, and I endorsed my bank-receipt to them, and got their bill at a short date. I went to my trunk, and placed it in safe deposit, pleased with my morning's work. Happy and content, on I worked, and I felt the desire to inadded to my store. crease it come stronger and stronger upon me, and I regretted when I had to purchase any necessary I required, even clothes and shoes: I was becoming a miser. I had mastered one hundred pounds, and all my anxiety was to make that two. I was the first and last in the workshop, and the most industrious; for my only pleasure was adding to my store. Guthrie, my friend, was still my fellow-lodger; but he seemed to me to keep the even tenor of his way, careful but void of any extreme desire to increase his wealth. Another of those fluctuations in trade came upon us, and several of the houses in town had became bankrupt. I felt very uneasy, but was not actually afraid, until one evening Guthrie came home very much depressed. I saw there was something wrong with him, and inquired what had happened. "Graham," he replied, "I hope all will end well; I hope it will." "What do you mean?" I inquired in great alarm, for the safety of my money flashed upon my mind. I rose and strode through the room, my eyes fixed upon him: I feared to receive his answer. 66 Our house," said he at length, "has slept none that night. On the next fore- "Graham," said he, after a pause, "I been retained by the trustee at my old salary, to assist in winding up matters; so you may rely upon my information." him of my regret at the mode of life I had lately followed; my firm determination to abandon my evil courses; and the shame I felt in leaving the hospital in my present few pounds in my chest, and, instead of returning to my loom, I went to the publichouse, where I sat and endeavored to forget my loss in the stupefaction of intoxication; Joy took possession of my mind; I told and day after day I continued this process, till I sunk into the lowest stage of misery and degradation. Repentance and good resolutions would succeed in the morning, only to be thrown aside in a few hours; for, as garb. He at once said he would lend me the effects of the debauch died away, the craving became unbearable, and I renewed the intemperance of the day before. I was like a fascinated bird, whom the eye of the snake was upon. I knew my doom; I mourned, and strove; but drink, the serpent, had me completely under its power. was now far more wretched than when I wandered through the streets with the good Annie. I was then only poor, for I was innocent and pious; now, I was equally poor, but without the innocence and peace I then enjoyed. Such was often my state of mind for I was now penniless and almost in rags-that, in the delirium of intoxication, I went to the river to throw myself in and end my misery: but before it came to this, my constitution, naturally strong, gave way, and I lost my senses for a time. five pounds on the security of my dividend, and I with pleasure accepted his friendly offer, and slept that night with a mind at ease. The first use I made of my recovering strength, was to call upon my friend Mr. Ross. The good old man was happy to see me, as he was wont to be before my career of dissipation. I laid open to him the sorrow I felt for my past conduct, and my resolve to avoid it for the future; and in a few days, I was seated at my loom, and continued steadily at my occupation without a wish to alter it. At length I received from the trustee on the bankrupt estate payment of my dividend; the amount was fifty-seven pounds, and I placed it in the bank with the few pounds I had saved since my reformation. I once more enjoyed a tranquil mind, and no longer thought of my loss. Mr. When I awoke to consciousness, I found Ross, who was now an old man, and had bemyself in the public hospital, weak as an in- come very frail, began to speak of giving up fant, and my mind calm and serene as if I business, and living upon what little money had awakened out of a sleep in childhood. he had saved, as he had no children of his My sight was so weak, I could not endure own alive. I inquired what sum he expected the light, and I closed my eyes, and began to for his looms and business. He asked reflect; the whole events of my life passing whether I knew any one likely to purchase in rapid succession before me, from the them. gar66 I smiled, and said: "Perhaps I ret with good Annie, to the green by the may be the person myself." He looked at river-side where consciousness left me. Bit- me with amazement. 66 Say you so, Charter regret came upon me, but it was void of lie; where did you find the purse?" For the remorse I had felt before. I may now neither Mr. Ross, nor any one of my old say I first prayed, for it was the sincere out- shopmates, knew that I had saved money, or pourings of my heart. I made resolves of that the loss of it had been the cause of my future amendment, and to return to my backsliding. I told him I had some cash in loom, never more to taste the cause of my the bank, but I feared not sufficient. “I degradation. But how was I to get out of am happy to hear you say so," he replied. the hospital, and again appear in a decent "As I do not require the money to be paid manner in the streets? The thought of this all at once, get whom you please to value the depressed me much, for my clothes were in articles, and you shall have them at the rags, and my shoes deserved not the name. price named. If you have not sufficient, I With a bitter feeling, I at length put on my will not distress you for the balance; you almost mendicant garb, and was about to can pay it by installments, at your conveleave the hospital, when, to my surprise, I saw nience." Guthrie enter the ward. I blushed as he approached he did not cordially take my hand as he was wont, and I saw he eyed me with a cold look of pity. I felt humbled and abased-I could not look him in the face. : Thus was I set up at last, the master of a business, and escaped from that undercurrent of life where so many glide, and writhe, and perish. I don't know much yet about what are called the upper ranks; but it occurs to me, that even they will look with some curiGraham," said he at length, "I am sor-osity, if not interest, on these details of ry for you, but I bring you good news. The what is going on in the depths below them. affairs of our house have been so far wound The things and persons I have described are up that there is a certainty of its paying all real, and all types of classes more or less above ten shillings in the pound. I have populous. From Chambers' Journal. THE GULF-STREAM. Ir is a singular fact, that two of the most important of the industrial arts-the extraction of food from the soil, and the transportation of commodities to and from distant regions have, from time immemorial, been the occupations of the most ignorant and prejudiced classes of mankind. The sailor, who witnessed the wonders of the great deep, was as little impressed by its marvellous phenomena as the ploughman, who, amidst the wonderful and mysterious process of vegetation, whistled as he went for want of thought. The boon which astronomy conferred upon the navigator may be compared to that which chemistry subsequently afforded to the agriculturist. Yet neither was sufficient. Vegetable physiology next aided the tiller of the soil; but the plougher of the deep, ignorant of its prevailing winds and currents, still empirically followed the devious tracks of the old voyagers. At length Lieutenant Maury, of the United States' navy, by collecting and collating an immense number of journals and log-books, was enabled to produce the Wind and Current Charts, that have caused so marked a progress in the art of navigation. From these charts, in their turn, Lieutenant Maury has written the first Physical Geography of the Sea.* The aim of this work is, as the author tells us, "to present the gleanings from this new field in a manner that may be interesting and instructive to all, whether old or young, ashore or afloat, who desire a closer look into the wonders of the great deep." Gleaning principally from this most industrious of gleaners in the wide field of science, let us attempt to describe one of the most remarkable of all known oceanic phenomena - the mighty current which ceaselessly flows from west to east, across the bosom of the North Atlantic. The fountain-head of this oceanriver, as it may well be termed, is in the Gulf of Mexico. From thence, it flows northeasterly along the shores of the United States, until it reaches the banks of Newfoundland; then stretches across the Atlantic to the British Islands, where it divides into two parts-one flowing northward to the Arctic Sea, the other southward to the Azores. In the whole world, there is not so majestic a flow of water as this ocean-river. Its current is more rapid than the Amazon or the Mississippi. In the severest droughts, it never fails; in the greatest floods, it never overflows. Though its banks and bed consist of cold water, yet the river itself is warm; and so great is the want of affinity between these *The Physical Geography of the Sea. London: 1855. waters, so reluctant are they to mingle with each other, that their line of junction is often distinctly visible to the eye one half of a ship may frequently be perceived floating in the cold ocean water, the other half in this warm current, known to mariners and geographers as the Gulf-stream. Long before the discovery of America, the Gulf-stream, by carrying nuts, bamboos, and artificially carved pieces of wood to the shores of Europe, indicated the existence of a western continent. Columbus himself was told by a settler in the Azores, that even strange boats had been seen, constructed so that they could not sink, and managed by broad-faced men of foreign appearance. Without doubt, these men were Esquimaux Indians. Wallace, in his Account of the Islands of Orkney, tells us that, in 1682, an Esquimaux was seen in his canoe off the south side of the island of Edda by many persons, who could not succeed in reaching him; and another was seen, in 1684, off the island of Westram. Moreover, he says, "be the seas never so boisterous, these boats, being made of fishskins, are so contrived that they can never sink, but are like sea-gulls swimming on the top of the water." Two more of these current-drifted canoes were subsequently found on the shores of the Orkneys; one was sent to Edinburgh, the other hung up in the church of Burra. As if determined to make its course and existence known to the most unobservant, the Gulf-stream carried the main-mast of the English ship Tilbury, that was destroyed by fire off the coast of St. Domingo, during the Seven Years' War, to the coast of Scotland. But, again, it carried to Scotland a number of casks of palm-oil, that were recognized, by their marks and brands, to be part of the cargo of a ship that had been wrecked near Cape Lopez, in Africa. How could this last remarkable drift come to pass? Simply thus the Gulf-stream, which we have compared to a river, is in reality a part of a great system of oceanic circulation. The branch that, as we have said, turns off from the British Islands, southwards to the Azores, joins the great equatorial current, which, flowing to the westward from the coast of Africa, enters the Caribbean Sea, and emerges from the Straits of Florida as the Gulf-stream. The casks of palm-oil, then, had twice traversed the Atlantic-first from east to west, in the equatorial current, and secondly, from west to east, in the Gulfstream before they found a resting-place on the coast of Scotland. To compare small things with great if we were to place little pieces of cork, chaff, or other light bodies, in a basin of water, and give the water a circular motion, the light substances would crowd together in the cen- | Sea and Gulf of Mexico, the boilers; the tre, where there is the least motion. So it is Gulf-stream, the conducting-pipe; from the in the great basin of the Atlantic, where the Banks of Newfoundland to the shores of Sargasso Sea forms the centre of the whirl Europe is the great hot-air chamber, spread caused by the circular motion of the equa- out so as to present a large surface. Here torial current and the Gulf-stream. This sea, the heat, conveyed into this warm-air chamsituated about midway in the Atlantic, in ber of mid-ocean, is taken up by the prevailthe triangular space between the Azores, ing west winds, and dispensed over our own Canaries, and Cape de Verd Islands, covering and other countries, where it is so much rea space equal in extent to the valley of the quired. Such, in short, is the influence of Mississippi, is so thickly matted over with a the Gulf-stream upon our climate, that Irepeculiar weed (Fucus natans), that the speed land is clothed in robes of evergreen grass; of vessels passing through it is often greatly while in the very same latitude, on the retarded. To the eye, at a short distance, it American side of the Atlantic, is the frostseems substantial enough to walk upon, and bound coast of Labrador. In 1831, the harcountless hosts of small crustacea dwell on this bor of St. John's, Newfoundland, was closed curious carpet of the ocean. Columbus sailed with ice so late in the season as June; yet through it, on his first voyage of discovery, the port of Liverpool, two degrees further in spite of the terrors of his less adventurous north, has never been closed by frost in the companions, who believed that it marked the severest winter. The Laplander cultivates limits of navigation; and its position has not barley in a latitude which, in every other altered since that time. This Sargasso, or part of the world, is doomed to perpetual Sea of Lentils, as the Spaniards first termed sterility. The benefit thus conferred on our it, has a historical interest. In the celebrated country by the Gulf-stream is a remarkable bull of Pope Alexander VI. in 1493, when he accident in our condition. It obviously dedivided the world between the Spaniards and pends on the Gulf of Mexico continuing to be the Portuguese, he decreed that the Sargasso a gulf, which, however, it might easily cease Sea was to be their mutual boundary to all to be. A subsidence of the Isthmus of Paneternity! ama to the extent of a couple of hundred feet -and such subsidences have taken place in geological times all over the world-would allow the equatorial current of the Atlantic to pass through into the Pacific, instead of being reflected back to our coasts. Britain would then become a Labrador, and cease to be the seat of a numerous and powerful people. The waters of the Gulf-stream do not, in any part of their course, touch the bottom of the sea. They are everywhere defended from so comparatively good a conductor of heat by a cushion of cold water, one of the best of non-conductors. Consequently, but little heat is lost, and the genial warmth is carried thousands of miles to fulfil its destined purposes. While the Gulf-stream is covering our On a winter-day, the temperature of the shores with verdure, ripening the harvests stream, as far north as Cape Hatteras, is from of England and the vintage of France, its intwenty to thirty degrees higher than the fluence is equally beneficial at its fountainwater of the surrounding ocean. Even after head in the western world. The Caribbean flowing 3000 miles, it preserves in winter the Sea and the Gulf of Mexico are encompassed heat of summer. With this temperature it on one side by the chain of West India crosses the fortieth degree of north latitude, Islands, and on the other by the Cordilleras and there overflowing its liquid banks, spreads of the Andes, contracting with the Isthmus itself out, for thousands of square leagues, of Darien, and again expanding over the over the cold waters around, covering the plains of Central America and Mexico. On ocean with a mantle of warmth, to mitigate the extreme summits of this range are the the climate of our high northern latitude. regions of eternal snow; next in descent is Moving now more slowly, but dispensing its the tierra templada, or temperate region; and genial influence more freely, it at last meets lower still is what the Spaniards truly and the British islands. By these it is divided, emphatically have termed tierra caliente, the one part going into the polar basin of Spitz- burning land. Descending still lower is the bergen, the other entering the bay of Biscay; level of the sea, where, were it not for this but each with a warmth considerably above wonderful system of aqueous circulation, the the ocean temperature. peculiar features of the surrounding country Modern ingenuity has suggested a well-assure us we should find the hottest and most known method of warming buildings, by pestilential climate in the world. But as means of hot water. Now, the north-western the waters become heated, they are carried parts of Europe are warmed, in an exactly off by the Gulf-stream, and replaced by similar manner, by the Gulf-stream. The cooler currents entering the Caribbean Sea. torrid zone is the furnace; the Caribbean The surface-water flowing out is four degrees |