good wishes she really felt for the Queen. She repeated the stanzas aloud, and was fairly well satisfied with them.

At all events, they had served to pass away a lonely hour or two. Presently Ned and her father returned with their account of the procession, and then Bess Parker paid Rosamund a visit; and so the day slipped by.

poetry. Thou must say it to father, Rose; he will be so pleased."

Indeed, Master Walton did feel prouder than usual (if that were possible) of his clever little daughter, as she walked between him and her grandmother to Winchester Cathedral on the morrow. For Rosamund had obeyed Ned's behest, and got well; and she was one of the

"Would you like to hear my completed verses?" he asked. "To-day when I came home I thought how the poem should go, and now I have read it to father, and he declares that I need not be ashamed of it."

Of course Rosamund would like to hear them; so Ned proceeded to read what was really a very creditable bit of verse for a lad of his age, while to the admiring little sister the poem seemed even more than that.

nearly four hours while Bishop Gardiner and his assistant prelates made Philip of Spain and Mary of England man and wife.

Her father pointed out to her the principal persons in the royal suite, and long, long afterward, when Rosamund described the scene to her grandchildren, she told them how she had seen the stern Duke of Alva, and the brave Flemish Count Egmont, the victor of Gravelines, who stood near the duke, handsome and frank of bearing, and dreaming not at all

one day exercise over his fate.

But naturally Rosamund, like every one else, looked most at the royal bride and bridegroom. They sat under a canopy with an altar between them, and both were resplendent in white satin richly ornamented with jewels; but Mary's blackvelvet mantle, and the little red slippers which peeped out from under the skirt of her robe, would probably be considered very strange in a bridal costume nowadays.

There was some embarrassment when it was time to give the bride away, for, strangely enough, no one had thought who should do it; but at last it was settled by the Marquis of Winchester and the Earls of Derby and Pembroke, who stepped forward and gave her away, in the name of the English nation; whereat there was much cheering by the people, and the ceremony went on.

At last it was all over, and then Ned, who had sat near his sister in the cathedral, went off at once to the Episcopal palace to wait there, with the other boys who had composed marriage-poems, till the Queen could hear them

recite.

That was not till after dinner; and so they waited during the banquet among the crowds of servants and musicians in the lower part of the hall. But at last the summons came; they

were conducted to the dais where Mary and Philip had dined, with only each other and Bishop Gardiner for company. When they found themselves in the presence of royalty, every boy felt his heart beat faster, and had a sudden fear lest now, at the critical moment, his tongue should cleave to the roof of his mouth, and the laboriously composed Latin verses go unrecited, after all.

However, they all managed to get through fairly well; and Mary was too radiantly happy to be very critical. Philip, too, who wished to find favor with his wife's subjects, was pleased to express his approval; and so all the boys were liberally rewarded for their efforts, and doubtless went away feeling themselves to be geniuses of the first water.

All but Ned. He recited last of all, and somehow, when he had finished, the Queen spoke so kindly and encouragingly that, almost without his knowing what he said, the words slipped out:

other, though regarding with ill-concealed distaste each other's foreign looks and ways.

Presently, Rosamund had reached the dais, and had kissed the hand of her sovereign, and of the King of Naples: for such had Prince Philip been created by his father, according to a paper read aloud that morning in the cathedral.

"Thy name, my little maiden?" the Queen's deep tones were saying.

66

Rosamund Walton, your Majesty," answered Rosamund, scarcely recognizing the sound of her own voice.

"Thy brother saith thou hast composed certain lines in honor of our marriage, Rosamund; and the King and I would gladly hear them. Canst thou say them to us?"

Rosamund looked up, glanced from Mary's radiant face with its dark, shining eyes, to Philip's, cold and mysterious, and wearing a forced smile; and, somehow, she felt very sorry for the Queen. This feeling made her forget

The next instant he was frightened at his boldness; but the Queen was smiling, and evidently not at all displeased.

"Ah!" she said, "so you have a sister, and she also hath composed some verses in honor of our marriage? I should like greatly to hear them."

"They are beautiful!" said Ned with enthusiasm. "They are much better than any

of ours."

Mary turned to Philip, and with a smile said something in the Castilian tongue. "We must really hear that," she said, turning to Ned once more. Suppose you fetch hither that clever sister. Tell her we would fain hear her epithalamium too."

Rosamund could scarcely believe it, when Ned came rushing in and told her that she, too, must go and recite before the Queen. The quick walk through the streets with her father and Ned seemed like a dream to her. So, too, did the arrival at the Bishop's palace, and the great hall where the long tables were spread, and where the English and Spanish courts were, for the present, making the best of each

voice; and so she stood up straight and recited her simple verses, not knowing what a pretty picture she made, nor that all eyes in the hall were fixed on her.

And when she finished speaking, there was first a little pause, such as Ned had made when she had recited it to him; and then the Queen bent forward to say, cordially, "Thank you, my dear"; and a buzz of praise was heard to pass around.

Philip spoke in Spanish, and Mary turned to Rosamund again.

"The King is very much pleased with thy verses," she said, as if there were no higher praise in all the world than that. "He says the English maids are as clever as they are fair; and he gives thee this jewel to thank thee for thy fine poesy. And this," she added, taking a very beautiful and valuable bracelet from her own arm, "I hope thou wilt wear sometimes to keep thee in mind of how much Queen Mary was delighted by thy poem upon her wedding-day."

She spoke also some kind and encouraging words to Master Walton, and then the audience

was over.

In the pages of the historians—or of some

of them — it is written how the boys of Winchester were allowed to come in and recite their Latin verses before the Queen and Philip; but of the one girl there is no mention made. Rosamund, however, had no thought of the historians when she composed her verses, so it would have grieved her little to know she was to be

ignored by them. Philip's jewel was afterward sold for a sum which was a fair dowry for her when she married, but the bracelet Rosamund kept all her life; and upon the Queen for whom so many had cruel words in the days that came after, she never pronounced a harsher judgment than, "Poor lady!"

WITH the growth of a large city, the protection of the water-front from the ravages of fire becomes an important study, almost as important as the study of fire protection for the city itself. Nearly every large city in the United States owes its growth to its nearness to some body of water, either lake, river, or sea, which offers exceptional advantages for the transportation of immense quantities of merchandise, and also provides harborage for all manner of craft engaged in this work.

This merchandise has to be stored somewhere during the process of loading and unloading these vessels, and the big warehouses and wharf-buildings along the water-front serve this purpose; but very often the most valuable cargoes are stored for a time in the flimsiest kind of buildings, needing but a spark to start a destructive conflagration.

As a city increases in size its importance as a freight-center grows in proportion; and the value of freight and merchandise stored along shore, during transit, in a big city like New York, can only be imagined. No reasonable valuation can be given, for we should have to dive too deeply into the amounts of imports and exports to get anywhere near the truth; but it is safe to say that one hundred millions would scarcely cover the property exposed to the danger of fire, in a single day, among the piers and wharfhouses of New York City.

Nor is this danger confined to piers and wharf-buildings alone, but vessels in the act of

loading and unloading valuable cargoes, the big bonded warehouses along the river-front, the docks for great ocean-steamers, and the freight stations of many big railroads are also exposed to this risk, and need to be well protected, for a serious fire among them would destroy more valuable property than perhaps a fire of the same extent in the very heart of the city.

Fires along shore are difficult ones to handle. There is always more or less wind near the water; if a gale is blowing it seems to have twice as much force on the water-front, and a fire once started here spreads very rapidly. Then fires on the piers, or in the wharf buildings, are usually very hard to fight;— although there is plenty of water all around, it is difficult to apply it to good effect. The land forces can only fight such a fire from one position the street side; and if the wind is blowing inland it drives the smoke and fire directly at them, and makes it nearly impossible to hold this position. It is here that the floating fire-engine or fire-boat can do its valuable work; and New York possesses a fleet of such vessels-three boats that are fully able to cope with a fire of almost any size, whether it be among the shipping, alongshore, or anywhere in the harbor.

Foremost among these vessels stands the fireboat " New Yorker " (officially known as Engine Co. No. 57), as she is without doubt the most powerful fire-boat afloat. The New Yorker's berth is at the Battery, where she lies beside a