not unequal to it. Ned Woodthorpe desires adventures, and has
his desire. He is swept out to sea in trying to rescue a bather, saved by a boatman, driven on to a lightship, and swept out of the lightship in the rigging of a vessel which collides with it. The vessel in which he finds himself, and in which a damaged knee compels him to remain, refusing a chance which presents itself of shipping in a homeward-bound craft, turns out to have a cargo of convicts. It will be readily understood, therefore, that his adventures do not terminate when he finds himself comfortably settled on board the convict-ship. They continue to crowd in upon him, till, when safe again at home, he is constrained to con- fess that adventures are, to say the least, not essential to happiness. Possibly one might be happy even without reading about them ; but boys do not think so. Coincidences one must not quarrel with ; the writers of such stories postulate them as a necessity of their craft.
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