crew and passengers powerless through cold
and exhaustion to do anything to save
themselves, like that Algerine sailor, in the wreck
of the Oasis a few days since, who could not
even speak, and lay for twenty-four hours on the
deck after the rest of the crew had been taken
off. But some two or three of the lifeboat's
crew climb up by broken cordage, or the
shattered figure-head, and let the helpless or the
wounded gently down. Not till the last man
is in do they return to shore. Often the
boat, just as it nears the beach, is sucked
back by the waves; often the oarsmen pull
as if through a solid mass of sea, above and
below. They watch for the coming of a
billow on whose crest they may be borne in.
There are a hundred eager hands ready to seize
the boat and keep her steady and safe from the
back wash of the waves. But the deep is
treacherous, and villages on the coast have had
cause to mourn not seldom, when, as if indignant
at the rescue of its prey, the sea overturns
the lifeboat just as all seemed safe, and grinds
to death the rescuer and the rescued.

Of these two hundred and fifty-seven boats,
one hundred and eighty-six belong to that noble
society, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
Forty-two are owned by harbour boards
or boatmen. Some of these boats are thank-
offerings from affluent persons who have not
forgotten to be grateful for their own rescue
from drowning. Others have been given by
mothers and wives in memory of the preservation
of sons or husbands.

The " wards" granted for special services
vary in kind and in value. Sometimes they
amount to four pounds, three pounds, or two
pounds each. On one occasion the sum allowed
was but fifteen shillings each man. But even
when a drowning man was apparently less an
object of public concern than a bale of cotton,
the lifeboats were cheerfully manned by daring
crews. No seaman ever thought of a possible
reward when he dashed through the surf to a
sinking ship.

GEORGE SILVERMAN'S
EXPLANATION.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

IN NINE CHAPTERS. SIXTH CHAPTER.

BROTHER HAWKYARD (as he insisted on my
calling him) put me to school, and told me to
work my way. " You are all right, George,"
he said. " I have been the best servant the
Lord has had in his service, for this five-and-
thirty year (O, I have!), and he knows the value
of such a servant as I have been to him (O yes
he does!), and he'll prosper your schooling as a
part of my reward. That's what he'II do,
George. He'll do it for me."

From the first I could not like this familiar
knowledge of the ways of the sublime inscrutable
Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard's part. As I
grew a little wiser and still a little wiser, I liked
it less and less. His manner, too, of confirming
himself in a parenthesis: as if, knowing himself,
he doubted his own word: I found distasteful.
I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me,
for I had a dread that they were worldly.

As time went on, I became a Foundation
Boy on a good Foundation, and I cost Brother
Hawkyard nothing. When I had worked my
way so far, I worked yet harder, in the
hope of ultimately getting a presentation to
College, and a Fellowship. My health has
never been strong (some vapour from the
Preston cellar cleaves to me I think), and what
with much work and some weakness, I came
again to be regarded—that is, by my fellow-
students—as unsocial.

All through my time as a Foundation-Boy, I
was within a few miles of Brother Hawkyard's
congregation, and when ever I was what we
called a Leave-Boy on a Sunday, I went over
there at his desire. Before the knowledge
became forced upon me that outside their place
of meeting these Brothers and Sisters were no
better than the rest of the human family, but on
the whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad
as most, in respect of giving short weight in
their shops, and not speaking the truth: I say,
before this knowledge became forced upon me,
their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit,
their daring ignorance, their investment of the
Supreme Ruler of Heaven and Earth with their
own miserable meannesses and littlenesses,
greatly shocked me. Still, as their term for the
frame of mind that could not perceive them
to be in an exalted state of Grace, was the
"worldly" state, I did for a time suffer tortures
under my inquiries of myself whether that young
worldly-devilish spirit of mine could secretly
be lingering at the bottom of my non-appreciation.

Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder
in this assembly, and generally occupied the
platform (there was a little platform with a
table on it, in lieu of a pulpit), first, on a
Sunday afternoon. He was by trade a drysalter.
Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a crabbed
face, a large dog's-eared shirt collar, and a
spotted blue neckerchief reaching up behind
to the crown of his head, was also a drysalter,
and an expounder. Brother Gimblet professed
the greatest admiration for Brother Hawkyard;
but (I had thought more than once) bore him a
jealous grudge.

Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly
take the pains here to read twice, my solemn
pledge that what I write of the language and
customs of the congregation in question, I write
scrupulously, literally, exactly, from the life and
the truth.

On the first Sunday after I had won what I
had so long tried for, and when it was certain
that I was going up to College, Brother
Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation thus:

"Well my friends and fellow-sinners, now I
told you when I began, that I didn't know a word
of what I was going to say to you (and No, I
did not!) but that it was all one to me, because