I did not see Mr.------ for two or three days after that.   Then, on
Tuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly into a
seat.   He was pale, worn; he was a wreck.   He lifted his faded eyes to my
face and said: 

“Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless rhymes.  They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after hour, to this very moment.  Since I saw you I have suffered the torments of the lost.  Saturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and took the night train for Boston.  The occasion was the death of a valued old friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon.  I took my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse.  But I never got beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train started and the car-wheels began their ’clack, clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack! —­clack-clack-clack!’ and right away those odious rhymes fitted themselves to that accompaniment.  For an hour I sat there and set a syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the car-wheels made.  Why, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had been chopping wood all day.  My skull was splitting with headache.  It seemed to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed and went to bed.  I stretched myself out in my berth, and—­well, you know what the result was.  The thing went right along, just the same.  ’Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for an eight cent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip slip, clack clack-clack, for a six-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so on punch in the presence of the passenjare!’ Sleep?  Not a single wink!  I was almost a lunatic when I got to Boston.  Don’t ask me about the funeral.  I did the best I could, but every solemn individual sentence was meshed and tangled and woven in and out with ’Punch, brothers, punch with care, punch in the presence of the passenjare.’  And the most distressing thing was that my delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes, and I could actually catch absent-minded people nodding time to the swing of it with their stupid heads.  And, Mark, you may believe it or not, but before I got through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all.  The moment I had finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy.  Of course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of the deceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into the church.  She began to sob, and said: 

“‘Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn’t see him before he died!’

“‘Yes!’ I said, ’he is gone, he is gone, he is gone—­oh, will this suffering never cease!’

“‘You loved him, then!  Oh, you too loved him!’

“‘Loved him!  Loved who?’

“‘Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!’