ecure my ticket.

"What class, sir?" cried the clerk.

"Which has she taken?" said I, forgetting all save the current of my own
thoughts.

"First or second, sir?" repeated he, impatiently.

"Either, or both," replied I, in confusion; and he flung me back some
change and a blue card, closing the little shutter with a bang that
announced the end of all colloquy.

"Get in, sir!"

"Which carriage?"

"Get in, sir!"

"Second-class? Here you are!" called out an official, as he thrust me
almost rudely into a vile mob of travellers.

The bell rang out, and two snorts and a scream followed, then a heave
and a jerk, and away we went As soon as I had time to look around me, I
saw that my companions were all persons of an humble order of the middle
class,--the small shopkeepers and traders, probably, of the locality we
were leaving. Their easy recognition of each other, and the natural
way their conversation took up local matters, soon satisfied me of this
fact, and reconciled me to fall back upon my own thoughts for occupation
and amusement This was with me the usual prelude to a sleep, to which
I was quietly composing myself soon after. The droppings of the
conversation around me, however, prevented this; for the talk had taken
a discussional tone, and the differences of opinion were numerous. The
question debated was, Whether a certain Sir Samuel Somebody was a great
rogue, or only unfortunate? The reasons for either opinion were well put
and defended, showing that the company, like most others of that class
in life in England, had cultivated their faculties of judgment and
investigation by the habit of attending trials or reading reports of
them in newspapers.

After the discussion on his morality, came the question, Was he alive or
dead?

"Sir Samuel never shot himself, sir," said a short pluffy man with an
asthma. "I 've known him for years, and I can say he was not a man to do
such an act."

"Well, sir, the Ostrich and the United Brethren offices are both of your
opinion," said another; "they 'll not pay the policy on his life."

"The law only recognizes death on production of the body," sagely
observed a man in shabby black, with a satin neckcloth, and whom I
afterwards perceived was regarded as a legal authority.

"What's to be done, then, if a man be drowned at sea, or burned to a
cinder in a lime-kiln?"

"Ay, or by what they call spontaneous combustion, that does n't leave a
shred of you?" cried three