No sooner was the hour of dinner over than the captain all of a sudden discovered that his ship's company were not smart enough in reefing topsails. So at it they went, racing up and down the rigging, tricing up and laying out, lowering away and hoisting, until six bells, three o'clock, when the angry and hungry captain went to his dinner. He had made himself more unpopular in that day than any other commander in the fleet. The dinner was unsocial enough. When a man is not satisfied with himself, it is rarely that he is satisfied with anybody else. Now, the whole ship's company, officers as well as men, were divided into parties, and into only two, respecting this affair of the cow; one believed in a supernatural, the other in a roguish, agency; in numbers they were about equal, so that the captain stood in the pleasant predicament of being looked upon in a sinful light by one half of his crew, and in a ludicrous one by the other. However, as the night advanced, and the marine who had seen the cow-spirit grew worse, the believers in the supernatural increased rapidly; and, as one sentinel was found unwilling to go alone, the cow had the distinguished compliment of a guard of honor or two all night. The captain, with a scornful defiance of the spiritual, would allow of no lights to be shown, or of no extraordinary precautions to be taken. He only signified his intentions of having himself an interview with the ghost, and for that purpose he walked the deck till midnight; but the messenger from the land of spirits did not choose to show himself so early. Let me hear no more any querulous talk of the labor of getting butter to one's bread-no person could have toiled more than the Honorable Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban to get milk for his breakfast. The two sentries were relieved at twelve o'clock, and, for a quarter of an hour after, everything remained dark and quiet about the haunted cow. The captain went below and turned in, joyfully anticipative of milk and cream in the morning. He left, of course, the most positive orders that the moment the ghost appeared he should be called. Mr. Mitchell, the pious first lieutenant, remained on deck, determined to see the sequel; told the master he was much troubled in spirit, and he thought, with all due deference to the articles of war, and respect to the captain, that he was little better than an infidel, and an over bold tempter of God's providence. The master remarked in reply that it was an affair entirely out of soundings; but very sagely concluded that they should see what they should see even if they saw nothing. It was a beautiful night, darkly, yet at the same time, brightly beautiful. There was no moon. The pure fires above were like scintillations from the crown of God's glory. Though the heavens were thus starred with splendors, it was deeply, though clearly, dark on the ocean. There was a gentle breeze that was only sufficient to make the sails draw, and the noble frigate walked stately and majestically onwards. Forward on the main-deck the darkness was Cimmerian. When lights had been last there at the relieving of the sentinels, the cow had quietly laid herself down upon her litter, and seemed to be in a profound sleep; the first hour after midnight was passed, and all was hushed as death, save those noises that indicate what else would be absolute silence more strongly. There was the whispering ripple of the sea, the dull creaking of the tiller-ropes, and the stealthy step of the sentinels; these sounds, and these only, were painfully distinct. One bell struck, and its solemn echoes seemed to creep through the decks as if on some errand of death, and the monotonous cry of the look-outs fell drearily on the ear. The first lieutenant and the officers of the watch had just begun to shake off their dreamy and fearful impressions, to breathe more freely and to walk the deck with a firmer tread, when, from what was supposed to be the haunted spot, a low shriek was heard, then a bustle, followed by half-stifled cries of "The guard! the guard!" The officers of the watch jumped down on the main deck, the midshipmen rushed into the cabin to call the captain, and men with and without lights rushed forward to the rescue. Deep in the darkness of the manger there glared an apparition that might more than justify the alarm. The spot where the phantom was seen (we pledge ourselves that we are relating facts), was that part of a frigate which seamen call "the eyes of her," directly under the foremost part of the forecastle, where the cables run through the hawse-holes, and through which the bowsprit treads upwards. The whole place is called By this time, several of the ward-room officers, and most of the midshipmen had reached the scene of action. Pistols were no longer wanting, and loaded ones too. Three shots were fired into the manger, with what aim it is impossible to specify, From the united evidence of the many at the spectre. They did not seem to annoy who saw this ghastly avatar, it appeared | his ghostship in the least; without an indionly to have thrust its huge head and a few cation of his beginning to grow hungry, feet of the forepart of its body through the might be deemed so. As the shot whistled hawse-hole, the remainder of its vast and past him, he worked his huge and fiery jaws voluminous tail hanging out of the ship over most ravenously. its bows. The frightful head and the glaring sockets of its eyes were distinctly marked in lineaments of fire. Its jaws were stupendous, and its triple row of sharp and long-fanged teeth seemed to be gnashing for something mortal to devour. It cast a pale blue halo around it, just sufficient to show the outlines of the den it had selected in which to make its unwelcome appearance. Noise it made none, though several of the spectators fancied that they heard a gibbering of unearthly sounds; and Mr. Littlejohn swore the next day upon his John Hamilton Moore, that it mooed dolefully like a young bullock crossed in love. To describe the confusion on the maindeck, while officers, seamen, and marines were gazing on this spectre, so like the fiery spirit of the Yankee sea serpent, is a task from which I shrink, knowing that language cannot do it adequately. The first lieutenant stood in the middle of the group, not merely transfixed, but paralyzed with fear; men were tumbling over each other shouting, praying, swearing. Up from the dark holds, like shrouded ghosts, the watch below, in their shirts, sprang from their hammocks; and for many, one look was enough, and the head would vanish immediately in the dark profound. The shouting for lights and loaded muskets and pistols was terrible; and the orders to advance were so eagerly reiterated, that none had leisure to obey them. But the cow herself did not present the least imposing feature in this picture of horror. She formed, as it were, the barrier between mortality and spirituality-all beyond her was horrible and spectral: by her fright she seemed to acknowledge the presence of a preternatural being. Her legs were stiff and extended, her tail standing out like that of an angered lion, and she kept a continued strain upon the halter with which she was tethered to a ring-bolt in the ship's side. "Well, said the second lieutenant, “let us give the gentleman another shot, and |then come to close quarters. Mr. Mitchell, you have a pistol in your hand: fire!" "In the name of the Holy Trinity!" said the superstitious first, "there!" Bang! and the shot took effect deep in the loins of the unfortunate cow. At this precise moment, Captain, the Honorable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban rushed from his cabin forward, attired in a rich flowered silk morning-gown in which scarlet predominated. He held a pistol cocked in each hand; and as he broke through the crowd, he bellowed forth lustily, "Where's the ghost let me see the ghost!" He was soon in the van of the astonished gazers; but, disappointed Fitzalban! he saw no ghost, because, as the man says in the Critic, "'twas not in sight." Immediately the honorable captain had gained his station, the much wronged and persecuted cow, galled by her wound, with a mortal effort snapped the rope with which she was fastened, and then lowering her horned head nearly level with the deck, and flourishing her tail after the manner that an Irishman flourishes his shillelagh before he commences occipital operations, she rushed upon the crowded phalanx before her. At this instant, as if its supernatural mission had been completed, the spirit vanished. The ideal having decamped, those concerned had to save themselves from the well followed up assaults of the real. The captain flew before the pursuing horns, dning the cow in all the varieties of condemnation. But she was generous, and she attached herself to him with an unwonted, or rather, an unwanted, fidelity. Lanterns were crushed and men overthrown, and laughter now arose amidst the shouts of dismay. The seamen tried to impede the progress of the furious animal by throwing down before her lashed up hammocks, and by seizing her behind by the tail; but, Blank were the countenances of many woe is me! the Honorable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban could not run so fast in his variegated and scarlet-flowered silk dressing-gown as a cow in the agonies of death; for he had just reached that asylum of safety, his cabin-door, when the cow took him up very carefully with her horns, and first giving him a monitory shake, then with inclination to port, she tossed him right over the ward-room skylight, and deposited him very gingerly in the turtle-tub that stood lashed on the larboard side of the half-deck. This exertion was her last; for immediately after, falling upon her knees, and then gently rolling over, to use an Homeric expression, her soul issued from her wound, and sought the shades below appropriated to the souls of cows. the next morning. The first lieutenant was not, as usual, asked to breakfast. There was distrust and division in his Majesty's Ship Nænia, and the Honorable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban had several severe contusions on his noble person, a bad cold, and no milk for breakfast; an accumulation of evils that one of the aristocracy ought not to be obliged to bear. Though Mr. Mitchell did not breakfast with the captain, Jack Small, alias Small Jack, alias Mr. Littlejohn, did. The only attempt of the captain that morning at conversation was as follows. With a voice that croaked like a raven's at the point of death, evidence externe of an abominable sore-throat, the captain merely said to the reefer, pointing his fore-finger downwards as he did the day before, "Milk ?" Mr. Littlejohn shook his head dolefully, and replied, "No, sir." "My cow died last night," said the afflic ted commander with a pathos that would have wrung the heart of a stone statue-if it could have heard it. "If you please, sir," said the steward, "Mr. Mitchell sends his compliments, and would be very glad to know what you would have done with the dead cow." may do whatever he likes with it. He shot it, and must pay me for it! let him eat it if he will." In the mean time, the captain was sprawling about, and contending with his turtle for room, and he stood a very good chance of being drowned even in a tub; but assistance speedily arriving, he was drawn out, and thus the world was spared a second tale of a tub. But there was something in the spirit of the aristocratic Fitzalban that neither cows, ghosts, nor turtle-haunted water could subdue. Wet as he was, and suffering also from the contu-"My compliments to Mr. Mitchell and he sions of the cow's horns, he immediately ordered more light, and proceeded to search for the ghost,-prolific parent of all his mishaps. Well escorted, he visited the manger, but the most scrutinizing search could discover nothing extraordinary. The place seemed to have been undisturbed, nor once to have departed from its usual solitariness and dirt. There was not even so much as a smell of sulphur on the spot where the spectre had appeared, nor were there any signs of wet, which, supposing the thing seen had been a real animal, would have been the case, had it come from the sea through the hawse-holes. The whole affair was involved in the most profound mystery. The honorable captain, therefore, came to the conclusion that nothing whatever had appeared, and that the whole was the creation of cowardice. Hot with rage and agueish with cold, he retired to his cabin, vowing all manner of impossible vengeance, muttering about court-martials, and solemnly protesting that Mr. Mitchell, the first lieutenant, should pay him for the cow that he had so wantonly shot. The first lieutenant and the captain were, after this, not on speaking terms for three months. Several duels had very nearly been fought about the ghost; those who had not seen it, branding those who had with an imputation only a little short of cowardice; those who had seen it, becoming for a few weeks very religious, and firmly resolving henceforward to get drunk only in pious company. The carcase of the cow was properly dressed and cut up, but few were found who would eat of it; the majority of the seamen thinking the animal had been bewitched! the captain of course would take none of it unless Mr. Mitchell would permit him to pay him for it at so much per pound, as he pertinaciously pretended to consider it to be the property of the first lieutenant. Consequently, the animal was nearly shared between the midshipmen's berth and the mess of which Joseph Grummet, the captain of the waist, was an unworthy member. The day following the death of the cow, "Oh !-the COW has given up the ghost!"-"And somebody else too!" This simple expression seemed to have much relieved Joe's overcharged bosom; he turned his quid in his mouth with evident satisfaction, grinned, and was shortly after lost in the darkness forward. There never yet was a ghost story that did not prove a very simple affair when the key to it was found. The captain of the Nænia never would believe that anything uncommon was ever seen at all. He was, however, as much in the wrong as those who believed that they had seen a ghost. The occurrence could not be forgotten, though it ceased to be talked of. Two years after, the ship came to England and was paid off. Joseph Grummet bagged his notes and his sovereigns with much satisfaction; but he did not jump like a fool in the first boat, and rush ashore to scatter his hard-earned wages among Jews, and people still worse; he stayed till the last man, and anxiously watched for the moment when the pennant should be hauled down. When he saw this fairly done, he asked leave to speak to the captain. He was ushered into the cabin, and he there saw many of the officers who were taking leave of their old commander. "Well, Grummet," said the skipper, "what now?" 66 Please your honor, you offered five guineas to anybody that would tell you who milked the cow." 66 And so I will gladly," said the captain, pleasantly, "if the same person will unravel the mystery of the ghost." And he turned a triumphant look upon the believers in spirits who stood around him. "I milked your cow, sir." แ "Ah! Joseph! Joseph! it was unkindly done. But with your hands?" "We widened a pair of Mr. Littlejohn's kid-gloves, sir." "I knew that little rascal was at the bottom of this! but there is honor in the midshipmen's berth still. What is the reason that they thus sought to deprive me of my property?"-" You wouldn't allow them to take any live stock on board that cruise, sir." "So-so-wild justice, hey? But come to the ghost ?"—"Why, sir, I wanted to have the cow unwatched for a quarter of an hour every middle watch; so I took the shark's head we had caught a day or two before, scraped off most of the flesh, and whipped it in a bread bag,-it shone brighter in the dark than stinking mackerel; so I whips him out when I wants him, and wabbles his jaws about. I was safely stowed under the bowsprit from your shot; and when your honor walked in on one side of the manger, I walked, with my head under my arm, out of the other." "Well, Joseph, there are the five guineas; and, gentlemen, "said the Honorable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, bowing to his officers, "I wish you joy of your ghost!" SOLID FOR MULHOOLY. A POLITICAL SATIRE. [RUFUS E. SHAPLEY was born in Carlisle, Pa., August 4, 1840; graduated at Dickinson College in 1860; was admitted to the bar in 1861, and has been actively engaged in the practice of his profession in Philadelphia since 1868. He has taken a somewhat active part in politics as a speaker, but has never held any political office. With the exception of occasional contributions to newspapers, he has published nothing except "Solid for Mulhooly," which appeared in 1881, and at once became immensely popular.] 1.—MICHAEL MULHOOLY: HIS ANTECEDENTS. learned to regard it as a disgrace that no member of the family of their acquaintance had ever learned to read and write. Had such a view of the case been suggested to them, they would, doubtless, have pointed proudly to that long line of Irish kings, from whom they, and all of their countrymen, are descended, not one of whom had ever troubled himself to acquire such useless accomplishments. When Michael was eighteen years of age, chance brought about a change in his life which laid the foundation of his fortunes, and proved to be the starting-point in his career of greatness. Dennis Mulhooly, a distant cousin, while on a visit to the tombs of his ancestors, conceived the idea of takMichael Mulhooly owed nothing of his ing the boy back with him to America, and greatness to high birth or early advantages. putting him at work in his saloon, known On the contrary, when he first opened his as the "Tenth Precinct House, by Mr. Deneyes his surroundings must have struck his nis Mulhooly." So Michael, not unwillinginfant mind as offering far from encourag-ly, yet not without many tears, bade fareing prospects to one about to begin life. ever return in the flesh; owing probably to the surprising dearth of native talent for statesmanship which they discover here as soon as they land upon our hospitable shores. II. HIS FIRST SCHOOL. well to that beautiful green isle which all his The ancestral halls of the Mulhoolys, countrymen from time immemorial have situated among the bogs of County Tyrone, sworn, and until time shall be no more will Ireland, consisted of a cabin of the style of continue to swear, is the finest spot of green architecture then fashionable in that section earth on this large globe; but which, neverof the country, containing a single apart-theless, so many of them leave at the first ment, inhabited, at the moment of his birth, opportunity, and to which so few of them by his parents, ten rapidly-maturing pledges of their love, and two pigs, which, encouraged by the example of the elder Mulhoolys, annually contributed somewhat more than their share towards the common wealth. These humble but faithful dependents of the family joined their voices to the general welcome which greeted the arrival of the future statesman, and, as soon as he was able to crawl upon the cabin floor, treated a foster brother to their own latest addition to the family circle. Thus his infancy, like that of so many of his countrymen who have become leaders of men in our free and happy country, was spent in a condition of poverty and squalor not apparently conducive to exceptional mental growth, but which is, nevertheless, as experience has demonstrated, especially calculated to develop a genius for leadership in American politics. him as UPON his arrival he began at the very foot of the ladder. The Tenth Precinct House, by Mr. Dennis Mulhooly," was not situated in what certain people would call a fashionable neighborhood, nor was it patronized by the most exclusive circles of society. Ministers of the gospel, bank presidents, and merchant princes never crossed its threshold. Public banquets to foreign potentates, men of letters and great generals, were never given in this hostelry. There were safer places in the world for a man to fall asleep in if he wished to retain his watch or pocket-book. Education, such as is derived from books, counter, a bar, three or four chairs, and a he did not acquire as he advanced towards stove, comprised all the furniture of the one the years of manhood, on account of cir- low room where Mr. Dennis Mulhooly cumstances over which he had no control catered to the appetites of the public. Two The fact is, there was not a school-house, or men were all the assistants he required a school-teacher, and probably not a printed prior to the arrival of Michael, who was book of any kind, within fifty miles of his immediately installed in the responsible but parental home. The Mulhoolys had not unremunerative post of boy-of-all-work. An oyster |