on.

A week later, and I heard that he was dead--having committed suicide
in a fit of delirium soon after his admission to the Binghamton
Inebriate Asylum. The attendant who made him ready for burial noticed
a singular blue mark on his left breast, that looked, he said, a
little like a horseshoe magnet.

OSGOOD'S PREDICAMENT.

BY ELIZABETH D. B. STODDARD.

_Harper's Magazine, June, 1863._

Osgood took a cane-bottomed chair whose edges had given way from the
application of boot-soles, cane and umbrella ferules, and studied his
predicament. He commenced this necessary study early in the morning in
his room, which was in a boarding-house situated in this metropolis.
The early carts were taking their way down town through a blue haze,
which in the country prefigured a golden day. The milkman, the
walk-sweeper, and the rag-picker, were the only creatures moving in
Osgood's neighborhood. The time was propitious for meditation and
resolve, but Osgood's head was not ready. The still Champagne that he
had drank the night before buzzed in his brain. With a glass of it in
his hand, under a side gas-light, in the drawing-room of his Aunt
Formica, he had proposed marriage to a handsome dashing girl, and
the handsome dashing girl had accepted him. They swallowed the
bubbles on the "beaker's brim," thinking it was the Cup of Life
they were drinking from. Neither supposed that the moment was one
of exhilaration or enthusiasm. Osgood never felt so serious, or so
determined to face the music, as he called it, which was the short for
a philosophical design to march boldly through life, and shoulder its
necessities with a brave spirit and a martial air.

Osgood was intelligent, agreeable, and handsome. He had advanced no
further into life than to give this impression. He knew nothing more
of himself than that he was intelligent, handsome, and "plucky." He
had no father or mother, but he had an aunt who had married Mr.
Formica; this pair, effete in themselves, belonged to that mysterious
class who are always able to get their relatives places under
Government. When Osgood was eighteen they obtained a place in the
Sub-Treasury, which yielded him the income of fifteen hundred dollars.
Aunt Formica expected a great deal from him in the way of deportment
and dress. The exigencies of his position, she observed, compelled him
to do as those around him did. Of course he never laid up any of his
salary, but he kept out of debt, and