, "a little quiet conversation," but
with great relief of mind adopted the amendment. He produced a decanter
of gin, and was bustling about for hot water and sugar, when he found
that his visitor had already drunk half of the decanter's contents. With
hot water and sugar the visitor drank the remainder before he had been
an hour in the chambers by the chimes of the church of St. Mary in the
Strand; and during the process he frequently whispered to himself,
"Mine!"

The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to follow it, the
visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness, "At what hour of the
morning, sir, will it be convenient?" Mr. Testator hazarded, "At ten?"
"Sir," said the visitor, "at ten to the moment, I shall be here." He
then contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said, "God bless
you! How is your wife?" Mr. Testator (who never had a wife) replied with
much feeling, "Deeply anxious, poor soul, but otherwise well." The
visitor thereupon turned and went away, and fell twice in going
downstairs. From that hour he was never heard of. Whether he was a
ghost, or a spectral illusion of conscience, or a drunken man, who had
no business there, or the drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with
a transitory gleam of memory; whether he got safe home, or had no home
to get to; whether he died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever
afterwards; he never was heard of more.

A NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH
[Sidenote: _Mark Twain_]

Distressing Accident.--Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr. William
Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was leaving his
residence to go down town, as has been his usual custom for many years,
with the exception only of a short interval in the spring of 1850,
during which he was confined to his bed by injuries received in
attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly placing himself
directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and shouting, which if he
had done so even a single moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened
the animal still more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous
enough to himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and
distressing by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who was
there and saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding it is at least likely,
though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitring in another
direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the look out,
as a gene