"
"The Story of the Four little Children who went Round the World" follows
next, and the account of the manner in which they occupied themselves while
on shipboard may be transcribed for the benefit of those unfortunate
persons who have not perused the original: "During the day-time Violet
chiefly occupied herself in putting salt-water into a churn, while her
three brothers churned it violently in the hope it would turn into butter,
which it seldom if ever did." After journeying for a time, they saw some
land at a distance, "and when they came to it they found it was an island
made of water quite surrounded by earth. Besides that it was bordered by
evanescent isthmuses with a great Gulf-Stream running about all over it, so
that it was perfectly beautiful, and contained only a single tree, five
hundred and three feet high." In a later passage, we read how "by-and-by
the children came to a country where there were no houses, but only an
incredibly innumerable number of large bottles without corks, and of a
dazzling and sweetly susceptible blue color. Each of these blue bottles
contained a bluebottlefly, and all these interesting animals live
continually together in the most copious and rural harmony, nor perhaps in
many parts of the world is such perfect and abject happiness to be found.
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