but indistinctly
without ears. I gathered enough, however, to know that it was astonished
at my wishing to remain alive under such circumstances. In the
concluding sentences it quoted the noble words of Ariosto--

Il pover hommy che non sera corty

And have a combat tenty erry morty; thus comparing me to the hero who,
in the heat of the combat, not perceiving that he was dead, continued to
contest the battle with inextinguishable valor. There was nothing now
to prevent my getting down from my elevation, and I did so. What it was
that Pompey saw so very peculiar in my appearance I have never yet been
able to find out. The fellow opened his mouth from ear to ear, and shut
his two eyes as if he were endeavoring to crack nuts between the lids.
Finally, throwing off his overcoat, he made one spring for the staircase
and disappeared. I hurled after the scoundrel these vehement words of
Demosthenes--

Andrew O'Phlegethon, you really make haste to fly, and then turned to
the darling of my heart, to the one-eyed! the shaggy-haired Diana. Alas!
what a horrible vision affronted my eyes? Was that a rat I saw skulking
into his hole? Are these the picked bones of the little angel who has
been cruelly devoured by the monster? Ye gods! and what do I behold--is
that the departed spirit, the shade, the ghost, of my beloved puppy,
which I perceive sitting with a grace so melancholy, in the corner?
Hearken! for she speaks, and, heavens! it is in the German of Schiller--

"Unt stubby duk, so stubby dun
Duk she! duk she!"

Alas! and are not her words too true?

"And if I died, at least I died
For thee--for thee."

Sweet creature! she too has sacrificed herself in my behalf. Dogless,
niggerless, headless, what now remains for the unhappy Signora Psyche
Zenobia? Alas--nothing! I have done.

MYSTIFICATION

Slid, if these be your "passados" and "montantes," I'll have
none o' them.

--NED KNOWLES.

THE BARON RITZNER VON JUNG was a noble Hungarian family, every member
of which (at least as far back into antiquity as any certain records
extend) was more or less remarkable for talent of some description--the
majority for that species of grotesquerie in conception of which Tieck,
a scion of the house, has given a vivid, although by no means the most
vivid exemplifications. My acquaintance with Ritzner commenced at the
magnificent Chateau Jung, into which a train of droll adventu