Next morning we sent back to the livery-stable what was left of
the yellow horse. It seemed tired, but anxious to go.

End of "A WALKING DELEGATE"



THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

It was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer
of twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind,
the outcome of forty years of experiments and improvements in
framework and machinery; and her designers and owner thought as
much of her as though she had been the Lucania. Any one can make
a floating hotel that will pay expenses, if he puts enough money
into the saloon, and charges for private baths, suites of rooms,
and such like; but in these days of competition and low freights
every square inch of a cargo-boat must be built for cheapness,
great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed. This boat was,
perhaps, two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet
wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her
main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great
glory was the amount of cargo that she could store away in her
holds. Her owners -they were a very well known Scotch firm came
round with her from the north, where she had been launched and
christened and fitted, to Liverpool, where she was to take cargo
for New York; and the owner's daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and
fro on the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass
work, and the patent winches, and particularly the strong,