especially in building lines of electric telegraph, where the best are
always the cheapest.

When Shakspeare made Puck promise to "put a girdle round about the earth
in forty minutes," he undoubtedly supposed he would thereby accomplish a
remarkable feat; but when the great Russo-American line _via_ Behring's
Strait and the Amoor is completed, and the Atlantic Cable is again in
operation, we can put an electric girdle round about the earth before
Puck could have time to spread his wings!

In view of what must actually take place at no distant day,--the
girdling of the earth by the electric wires,--a singular question
arises:--If we send a current of electricity east, it will lose
twenty-four hours in going round the globe; if we send one west, it
will gain twenty-four, or, in other words, will get back to the
starting-place twenty-four hours before it sets out. Now, if we send
a current half-way round the world, it will get there twelve hours in
advance of, or twelve hours behind our time, according as we send it
east or west; the question which naturally suggests itself, therefore,
is, What is the time at the antipodes? is it _yesterday_ or _to-morrow?_
LOVE AND SELF-LOVE.


"Friendless, when you are gone? But, Jean, you surely do not mean that
Effie has no claim on any human creature, beyond the universal one of
common charity?" I said, as she ceased, and lay panting on her pillows,
with her sunken eyes fixed eagerly upon my own.

"Ay, Sir, I do; for her grandfather has never by word or deed
acknowledged her, or paid the least heed to the letter her poor mother