to every corner, they listened
at every cranny and crevice, step and turn. But not a burglar! Of course
not. A regiment might have run away while Amram was waking up.

Keturah thinks it will hardly be credited that this hopeful person dared
to suggest and dares to maintain that it was _Cats_!

But she must draw the story of her afflictions to a close. And lest her
"solid" reader's eyes reject the rambling recital as utterly unworthy
the honor of their notice, she is tempted to whittle it down to a moral
before saying farewell. For you must know that Keturah has learned
several things from her mournful experience.

1. That every individual of her acquaintance, male and female, aged and
youthful, orthodox and heretical, who sleeps regularly nine hours out of
the twenty-four, has his or her own especial specimen recipe of a
"perfectly harmless anodyne" to offer, with advice thrown in.

2. That nothing ever yet put her to sleep but a merciful Providence.

3. A great respect for Job.

4. That the notion commonly and conscientiously received by very
excellent people, that wakeful nights can and should be spent in prayer,
religious meditation, and general spiritual growth, is all they know
about it. Hours of the extremest bodily and mental exhaustion, when
every nerve is quivering as if laid bare, and the surface of the brain
burning and whirling to agony, with the reins of control let loose on
every rebellious and every senseless thought, are not the times most
likely to be chosen for the purest communion with God. To be sure. King
David "remembered Him upon his bed, and meditated upon Him in the
night-watches." Keturah does not undertake to contradict Scripture, but
she has come to the conclusion that David was either a _very_ good man,
or he didn't lie awake very often.

But, over and above all, _haec fabula docet_:

5. That people who can sleep when they want to should keep Thanksgiving
every day in the year.

The Day of My Death[1]

[Footnote 1: The characters in this narrative are fictitious. The
incidents the author does not profess to have witnessed. But they are
given as related by eye-witnesses whose testimony would command a
verdict from any honest jury. The author, however, draws no conclusions
and suggests none.]

Alison was sitting on a bandbox. She had generally been sitting on a
bandbox for three weeks,--or on a bushel-basket, or a cupboard shelf, or
a pile of old newspapers, or the baby'