glyphics;
and there was a general rush to Bullet-head's residence, for the purpose
of riding him on a rail; but that gentleman was nowhere to be found. He
had vanished, no one could tell how; and not even the ghost of him has
ever been seen since.

Unable to discover its legitimate object, the popular fury at length
subsided; leaving behind it, by way of sediment, quite a medley of
opinion about this unhappy affair.

One gentleman thought the whole an X-ellent joke.

Another said that, indeed, Bullet-head had shown much X-uberance of
fancy.

A third admitted him X-entric, but no more.

A fourth could only suppose it the Yankee's design to X-press, in a
general way, his X-asperation.

'Say, rather, to set an X-ample to posterity,' suggested a fifth.

That Bullet-head had been driven to an extremity, was clear to all; and
in fact, since that editor could not be found, there was some talk about
lynching the other one.

The more common conclusion, however, was that the affair was, simply,
X-traordinary and in-X-plicable. Even the town mathematician confessed
that he could make nothing of so dark a problem. X, every. body knew,
was an unknown quantity; but in this case (as he properly observed),
there was an unknown quantity of X.

The opinion of Bob, the devil (who kept dark about his having 'X-ed the
paragrab'), did not meet with so much attention as I think it deserved,
although it was very openly and very fearlessly expressed. He said that,
for his part, he had no doubt about the matter at all, that it was a
clear case, that Mr. Bullet-head 'never could be persuaded fur to drink
like other folks, but vas continually a-svigging o' that ere blessed XXX
ale, and as a naiteral consekvence, it just puffed him up savage, and
made him X (cross) in the X-treme.'

METZENGERSTEIN

Pestis eram vivus--moriens tua mors ero.

--_Martin Luther_

HORROR and fatality have been stalking abroad in all ages. Why then give
a date to this story I have to tell? Let it suffice to say, that at the
period of which I speak, there existed, in the interior of Hungary, a
settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the Metempsychosis.
Of the doctrines themselves--that is, of their falsity, or of their
probability--I say nothing. I assert, however, that much of our
incredulity--as La Bruyere says of all our unhappiness--"_vient de ne
pouvoir etre seuls_." {*1}

But there are some points in the Hungar