“Drop of something to drink,” interrupted the stranger.  “I am agreeable.”

Mr. Testator had intended to say, “a little quiet conversation,” but with great relief of mind adopted the amendment.  He produced a decanter of gin, and was bustling about for hot water and sugar, when he found that his visitor had already drunk half of the decanter’s contents.  With hot water and sugar the visitor drank the remainder before he had been an hour in the chambers by the chimes of the church of St. Mary in the Strand; and during the process he frequently whispered to himself, “Mine!”

The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to follow it, the visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness, “At what hour of the morning, sir, will it be convenient?” Mr. Testator hazarded, “At ten?” “Sir,” said the visitor, “at ten to the moment, I shall be here.”  He then contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said, “God bless you!  How is your wife?” Mr. Testator (who never had a wife) replied with much feeling, “Deeply anxious, poor soul, but otherwise well.”  The visitor thereupon turned and went away, and fell twice in going downstairs.  From that hour he was never heard of.  Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral illusion of conscience, or a drunken man, who had no business there, or the drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with a transitory gleam of memory; whether he got safe home, or had no home to get to; whether he died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever afterwards; he never was heard of more.

A NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH
[Sidenote:  Mark Twain]

Distressing Accident.—­Last evening, about six o’clock, as Mr. William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was leaving his residence to go down town, as has been his usual custom for many years, with the exception only of a short interval in the spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by injuries received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly placing himself directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and shouting, which if he had done so even a single moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and distressing by reason of the presence of his wife’s mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitring in another direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the look out, as a general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to have stated, who is no more, being a Christian woman and without guile, as it were, or property, in consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed every single thing she had in the world.  But such is life.  Let us all take warning by this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavour so to conduct ourselves that when we come to die we can do it.  Let us place our hands upon our hearts, and say with earnestness and sincerity that, from this day forth, we will beware of the intoxicating bowl.