brief.
Obtaining political influence through caucuses, I became at last Page
in the Senate. Through the exertions of political friends I was
appointed clerk to the commissioner whose functions I now represent.
Knowing through political spies in your own camp who you were, I acted
upon the physical fears of the commissioner, who was an ex-clergyman,
and easily induced him to deputize me to consult with you. In doing
so, I have lost my scalp, but as the hirsute signs of juvenility have
worked against my political progress I do not regret it. As a
partially bald young man I shall have more power. The terms that I
have to offer are simply this: you can do everything you want, go
anywhere you choose, if you will only leave this place. I have a
hundred thousand-dollar draft on the United States Treasury in my
pocket at your immediate disposal."

"But what's to become of me?" asked Chitterlings.

"Your case has already been under advisement. The Secretary of State,
who is an intelligent man, is determined to recognize you as de jure
and de facto the only loyal representative of the Patagonian
government. You may safely proceed to Washington as its envoy
extraordinary. I dine with the secretary next week."

"And yourself, old fellow?"

"I only wish that twenty years from now you will recognize by your
influence and votes the rights of C. F. H. Golightly to the presidency."

And here ends our story. Trusting that my dear young friends may take
whatever example or moral their respective parents and guardians may
deem fittest from these pages, I hope in future years to portray
further the career of those three young heroes I have already
introduced in the spring-time of life to their charitable consideration.

THE MAN WHOSE YOKE WAS NOT EASY

He was a spare man, and, physically, an ill-conditioned man, but at
first glance scarcely a seedy man. The indications of reduced
circumstances in the male of the better class are, I fancy, first
visible in the boots and shirt; the boots offensively exhibiting a
degree of polish inconsistent with their dilapidated condition, and the
shirt showing an extent of ostentatious surface that is invariably
fatal to the threadbare waist-coat that it partially covers. He was a
pale man, and, I fancied, still paler from his black clothes.

He handed me a note.

It was from a certain physician; a man of broad culture and broader
experience; a man who had devoted the greater part