(_BY OUR OWN GRANDOLPH._)

[Illustration: "Put out the light, and then--" Being the true story of
The Wonderful Lamp.]

I pause in my communications. Friends, real friends, have wired
over accounts of me on the trip, which have not been written by
"friendlies." Somebody wrote to _Black and White_ what purported to
be Notes about me aboard the gallant _Grantully Castle_, than which
a better-found vessel--"found" is the word--never put to sea. This
somebody ("bless him!"--DR-MM-ND W-LFF will know what I mean) observes
that "he didn't notice" any particular gratitude on my part towards
Captain HAY and his talented assistants. Hay! what? why, confound
them, I was all gratitude! Is it because I did not run at him, embrace
him, and shake his arms off, that therefore I did not _feel_ grateful!
I was awfully grateful. I felt inclined to alter the name of the
vessel to the _Gratefully_ _Castle_. But "she" (you always call a
vessel "she"--isn't that nautical?) "is" as the song says "another's,
and never can be mine!" so I can't change her name. I was overpowered
by my feelings--and what does that mean but the swallowing, with a
gurgle in the throat, of the silent tear, and the avoidance of the
topic uppermost in one's mind at the moment.

"The soldier leant upon his sword, and wiped away a tear"--but the
sailor didn't, _Verb. sap._ What did I do? Why, in my note of notes,
my Private Diary, I made this mem., "_Make Hay while the sun shines._"
Now what, I ask any unprejudiced person, what does this mean? If
Captain HAY were suddenly to be promoted in the hay-day of his
valuable career to be an Admiral, would he suspect that he owed this
elevation to the man who, strictly obeying the ship's orders, _never