110 UNOPENED PARCELS.

at sea, you know, if the Queen passed an Act of
Parliament forbidding the use of nasty arithmetic
to her loving subjects. No more cockatoos, no
more stories of monkeys, no more fans, no more
edible birds’ nests—— ”

“Oh, don’t papa, please!” cried I; “ besides,
surely ships could go sailing on still.”

“Ay, sailing on, child,” mused my father, “ sail-
ing on without knowing whither—without a com-
pass, without a chart, without any use from sun
and stars—sailng on—say drifting rather, to
certain destruction, from accidents or starvation.
Is it possible you don’t know, Honor, that ships
are guided over the trackless oceans by that very
faculty of calculation we have been talking about ?
It is by a cumulative set of such little simple
propositions as take three from four and one re-
mains, add two and two together and they make
four, that men make their way over the literally
pathless water, as if it were mapped out for them
(ay, and they make maps of it afterwards) ; caleu-
late how far they have come in so many hours, and
which way they have come, the mysterious magnet