This he did during office hours, and about the same time he wrote an official despatch to a brother officer. By some unaccountable mistake the sonnet was sent to the official, and the despatch to. the widow. The secret of Sir G. was thus made publip, for when he next met his brother official the latter asked him with cutting sarcasm what the deuce he had meant by lauding the beauty of his eye 3, and how he had metamorphised his black teeth into pearls. The wooing prospered, notwithstanding this contretemps, and the then widow is the present Lady G. F. Bo wen,

I did think that, like the moa, the me gatherium, and other strange animals of the old times, that class of morose fanatics who would

" f^ang up torn cat, For killing on Lord's Day a rat," but put the execution ofi till Monday, had become extinct. But such is not the fact. A remarkable member of that gloomy family turned up in New Zealand recently, and showed himself worthy of the days of yore. A man had to send a horse and cart to convey his wife home one Sunday. For this offence the fanatic had him brought up under an obsolete statute of the old puritanical era. The magistrate was luckily enabled through some informality to dismiss the case, to the no small chagrin of this charitable Christian. These fellows are out of date now, and they ought to be aware of it. When one of them stands forth to cham pion his absurd doctrines he is viewed with as much wonderment as an icthyo saurus would be were he to swim up the ; Orey at noon. The change is a blessed one. Why should man be filled with gloom and sourness upon the day when he partakes of the consolations of religion 1 If the result of devotion be the expulsion of all gladness from the heart no wonder so few are devout. Bachelors may not be very desirable members of a community. 