tiously, as becomes our unofficial state- and, therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before Your Majesty, save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a realm, which, through good and through evil report, has been the steadfast friend of the land we love so well." The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally in a tablecloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee-stains, and bearing a scepter that looked strangely like a belaying pin, walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes, and Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting "watch below," transformed into graceless ladies and uncouth pilgrims, by rude travesties upon waterfalls, hoopskirts, white kid gloves, and swallow-tail coats, moved solemnly up the companion-way, and bowing low, began a system of complicated and extraordinary smiling which few monarchs could look upon and live. Then the mock consul, a slush-plastered decksweep, drew out a soiled fragment of paper and proceeded to read, laboriously "To His Imperial Majesty, Alexander II., Emperor of Russia: "We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation,- and unostenta |