A long bombardment is one of the most boring things in the world by reason of its intense monotony, and because in a queer half-unconscious way it begins, after many hours, very slightly to fray the nerves.

I'll fray the scholar, I warrant thee.

" Arrived in the European quarter he smoothed what creases he could out of his sole suit of drills, whitened his soggy topee and frayed canvas shoes with a piece of chalk purloined from a billiard saloon, bluffed a drink out of an inebriated ship's engineer and snatched a free lunch on the strength of it.

For it became a matter of immense importance to know, not only the depth of the sea over the whole line along which the cable was to be laid, but the exact nature of the bottom, so as to guard against chances of cutting or fraying the strands of that costly rope.

When, when will day Begin to dawn, whose new-born ray May gild the weathercocks of our devotion, And give our unsouled souls new motion? Sweet Phosphor, bring the day: The light will fray These horrid mists: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

And then began to be strained and frayed that much-abused piece of parchment which Thomas Paine called the political Bible of the American people, and foolishly thought indispensable to liberty in a representative government.

The next morning, dressed in a shabby blouse, alpaca cap, and trousers frayed out round the ankles, IHector Ratichon, the confidant of kingswas lounging under the porte-cochere of No. 65

and mercy took again in her hand the yellow ivory whistle, and ran her fingers over the faded and frayed pink ribbon, and looked at it with an indefinable sense of its being a strange link between her and a distant past, which, though she had never shared it, belonged to her by right.

He was on the point of replying that certain kinds of poetry, and In Memoriam in particular, seemed to him more like the speech of a despair that had not the courage to confess itself and die; but he saw she had not a suspicion he spoke as he did for any thing but argument, and feared to fray his bird by scattering his crumbs too roughly.

Nay, he'll do more than that too, for he'll make himself like a devil, and fray the scholar that hankers about her out on's wits.

And ye be a sprite, I'll fray the bugbear.

"An ass will with his long ears fray The flies that tickle him away; But man delights to have his ears Blown maggots in by flatterers.

The specimen had the anterior part of the fin frayed a little, so that it is probable that the soft rays are higher and less distinctly branched than the artist has represented them to be in copying the example placed before him.