nto wholesale. No! I'll take
Stocks in Wall street. Make or break,
That's my motto! With my luck,
Where's the chance of being stuck?
Call it Sixty Thousand, clear,
Made in Wall street in one year.

Sixty thousand! Umph! Let's see.
Bond and mortgage'll do for me.
Good. That gal that passed me by
Scornful like--why, mebbe I
Some day'll hold in pawn--why not?--
All her father's prop. She'll spot
What's my little game, and see
What I'm after's her. He! he!

He! he! When she comes to sue--
Let's see. What's the thing to do?
Kick her? No! There's the perliss!
Sorter throw her off like this!
Hello! Stop! Help! Murder! Hey!
There's my whole stock got away!
Kiting on the house tops! Lost!
All a poor man's fortin! Cost?
Twenty dollars! Eh! What's this?
Fifty cents! God bless ye, Miss!

BRET HARTE.

AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL.

THE TRUE STORY OF A HALLUCINATION.

The career of the Abbe Gerard had been an eminently successful
one--successful in every way; and even he himself was forced to
acknowledge it to be so as he reviewed his past life, sitting by a
blazing fire in his comfortable apartment in the Rue Miromeuil previous
to dressing for the Duc de Frontignan's dinner-party. Born of poor
parents in the south of France, entering the priesthood at an early age,
having received but a meagre education, and that chiefly confined to a
superficial knowledge of the most elementary treatises on theology, he
had, in twenty-five years, and solely by his own exertions, unaided by
patronage, obtained a most desirable berth in one of the leading Paris
churches, thereby becoming the recipient of a handsome salary and being
enabled to indulge his tastes as a dilettante and _homme du monde_. The
few hours snatched from those absorbed by his parochial duties he had
ever devoted to study, and his application and determination had borne
him golden fruit. Moreover, he had so cultivated his mind, and made such
good use of the rare opportunities afforded him in early life of
associating with gentlemen, that when now at length he found his
presence in demand at every house in the "Faubourg" where wit and
graceful learning were appreciated, no one would ever have suspected he
had not been bred according to the strictest canons of social
refinement.

But in his upward progress such had been his experience of life that