I have told my story so many different ways to suit different fancies, that I really cannot recollect the precise words in which I gratified the curiosity of Titania. I know, however, that my name and lineage were a mystery — that I was exposed one stormy night on an island in the Ægean Sea-and that my father was a terrible-eyed man, with a curling lip and a high forehead, grievously gashed with sabres. Titania was vastly amused, and protested it was all wondrously interesting.

"Of course," said she, "you soon took to scowling and scrambling amongst rocks, and felt a strong propensity for fighting and philandering, in which you turned out a prodigy and the true son of a corsair. I wish it was all fact."

"Am I not proving it so even now? Are you not my prisoner, and am I not taking you heaven knows whither? I am serious, I vow; look back, and see if I am not."

She turned her head towards home, and found that nothing was visible but a faint streak, from which the breeze was bearing us at the rate of ten knots an hour. The sun, moreover,

was down, and the moon was up; and, in short, every thing was very alarming.

"Merciful Powers!" said Titania, "what fun! What a pity we are obliged to return!” "Make yourself easy," said I, "you will not return to-night."

The beauty now began to gaze upon me in something very like amazement, and besought me, with tears in her eyes, to convey her home by tea-time; but I was inflexible, like a true pirate. In plain English, I had been beguiled rather farther than I intended; and, as the breeze blew, it was impossible to return under twelve hours at least. Here was an adventure with a vengeance. Titania cried herself into fits, and declared she would fling herself overboard, and drink tea with the mermaids. As for me, I could but bite my fingers, and wonder what was to be done, without coming to any conclusion, save and excepting that we had got into a woeful scrape. And thus we kept standing on our course, till the picture of our mutual distress became too comical to be resisted.

"Heavens!" exclaimed Titania, with a face of rueful merriment; "what will become of us?"

It was the very question I was going to ask Titania; and we drew our seats closer, and clasped our fingers firmer, in sage and deliberate council. I gazed upon her face in silence, and fancied that it grew every moment more lovely. She was already unhappy in her home, and I had been the means of leading her into a serious dilemma. If she was a flirt, she was young enough to mend. If I had only known her three hours, her whole history was written in her

countenance.

"Titania," said I, "I have hit upon a lucky thought.'

"Pray speak it then, for time is precious." "We are within a few hours sail of the Tweed let us go and be married."

to

Titania screamed.

66

Surely," I exclaimed, “I am as preferable

your

old uncle as you are to all the world; and if you persist in returning to him, you will only be turned out of doors-without shoes and

stockings."

There was something too like the truth in this argument, and she looked up in my face, perplexed in the extreme. I became more and

more in earnest, and pressed my suit till she really saw that it was no joke. Her sorrows were now more violent than ever. What could I think of her to suppose that she would yield to the barbarity of being kidnapped after a mere evening's attention; and-oh heavens ! -how was she to know that I was not some linendraper's apprentice, with a monosyllabic name that would strike her into stone! My hair stood on end at such a base suspicion, and I vowed, as I valued the blessing of her uncle, that my father was a gentleman, whatever she might be pleased to think of his successorthat I had never measured a yard of calico, or done a common-place action, of any description, in the whole course of my life—and that my name was three good syllables, measure it which way she would.

As I proceeded, I became more pathetic and persuasive. I spoke of my persecution by the house-dog, and my banishment from my paternal home, in a strain of absolute poetry enlarged forcibly upon the durability of sudden impressions, with a happy allusion to the luxuriance of hothouse productions and de

scribed a honeymoon and honeysuckle-cottage by the lakes with an eloquence which made me stare my own wits out of countenance. Titania grew calmer, and listened in sullen attention. Afterwards she permitted me to resume the hand which had been withdrawn in a paroxysm; in a short time she regained her smiles; and, in half an hour, we agreed that it was a most admirable adventure, and quite out of the common way.

Oh, man in the moon! didst thou ever see such happy folks in thy life? We beheld no speck upon the sheet of silver which surrounded us no indication of a land of less sensitive beings. The whole world seemed divided between us and a benighted sea-bird, which Titania firmly believed to be a spirit conducting us to some island of the blest. We remained on deck during the whole of the love-sick night, forming visions of bliss of which neither lover nor lunatic ever dreamt before. The only quarrel was, whether I did not think her a little given to unsteadiness; and the only lamentation, that my uncle had lost his

tea.