“Relict of—­”

“Relict of our first choice.  He married her, and is happy and respected and prosperous yet.  Ah, it was like a novel, sir—­it was like a romance.  This is my stopping-place, sir; I must bid you goodby.  Any time that you can make it convenient to tarry a day or two with me, I shall be glad to have you.  I like you, sir; I have conceived an affection for you.  I could like you as well as I liked Harris himself, sir.  Good day, sir, and a pleasant journey.”

He was gone.  I never felt so stunned, so distressed, so bewildered in my life.  But in my soul I was glad he was gone.  With all his gentleness of manner and his soft voice, I shuddered whenever he turned his hungry eye upon me; and when I heard that I had achieved his perilous affection, and that I stood almost with the late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly stood still!

I was bewildered beyond description.  I did not doubt his word; I could not question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness of truth as his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my thoughts into hopeless confusion.  I saw the conductor looking at me.  I said, “Who is that man?”

“He was a member of Congress once, and a good one.  But he got caught in a snow-drift in the cars, and like to have been starved to death.  He got so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three months afterward.  He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole car-load of people he talks about.  He would have finished the crowd by this time, only he had to get out here.  He has got their names as pat as A B C. When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says:  ’Then the hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived; and there being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no objections offered, I resigned.  Thus I am here.’”

I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to the harmless vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a bloodthirsty cannibal.

The killing of Julius Caesar “Localized”—­[Written about 1865.]

Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the Roman “Daily Evening Fasces,” of the date of that tremendous occurrence.

Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder and writing them up with aggravating circumstantiality.  He takes a living delight in this labor of love—­for such it is to him, especially if he knows that all the other papers have gone to press, and his will be the only one that will contain the dreadful intelligence.  A feeling of regret has often come over me that I