fact in some way. Here is one that illustrates my meaning:

"ONLY TALMAGE!

"The weary husband was lounging in the old armchair reading before
the fire after the day's work. Suddenly he brought down his hand
vigorously upon his knee, exclaiming, 'That's so! That's so!' A
minute after, he cried again, 'Well, I should say.' Then later,
'Good for you; hit them right and left.' Soon he stretched himself
out at full length in the chair, let his right hand, holding the
paper, drop nearly to the floor, threw up his left and laughed aloud
until the rafters rang. His anxious wife inquired, 'What is it so
funny, John?'

"He made no reply, but lifted the paper again, straightened himself
up, and went on reading. Very quiet he now grew by degrees. Then
slyly he slipped his left hand around and drew out his handkerchief,
wiped his brow and lips by way of excuse and gave his eyelids a
passing dash. The very next moment he pressed the handkerchief to
his eyes and let the paper drop to the floor, saying, 'Well, that's
wonderful.' 'What is it, John?' his good wife inquired again. 'Oh!
It's only Talmage!'"

My contemporaries in Brooklyn celebrity at this time were unusual men.
Some of them were dear friends, some of them close friends, some of them
advisers or champions, guardians of my peace--all of them friends.

About this time I visited Johnstown, shortly after the flood. My heart
was weary with the scenes of desolation about me. It did not seem
possible that the hospitable city of Johnstown I had known in other days
could be so tumbled down by disaster. Where I had once seen the street,
equal in style to Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, I found a long ridge of
sand strewn with planks and driftwood. By a wave from twelve to twenty
feet high, 800 houses were crushed, twenty-eight huge locomotives from
the round house were destroyed, hundreds of people dead and dying in its
anger. Two thousand dead were found, 2,000 missing, was the record the
day I was there. The place became used to death. It was not a sensation
to the survivors to see it about them. I saw a human body taken out of
the ruins as if it had been a stick of wood. No crowd gathered about it.
Some workmen a hundred feet away did not stop their work to see. The
devastation was far worse than was ever told. The worst part of it could
not even be seen. The heart-wreck was the unseen tragedy of this
unfort