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she would oblige me if she would give me the
address of the person with whom Mrs Stanhope
lodged, and also that of the medical practitioner
who attended. She complied at once; and folding
up the
paper, I was about to leave the room,
when she interposed, and earnestly entreated me
not to publish to the world her share in the

matter.

'At present,' I said, 'I have no intention of so doing; but I can make no promise. If the child is really dead, as you state, no good purpose could be served by such a course. Before, however, I am satisfied upon that point, I must have better evidence than that which I now possess ;' and with that I bowed and left the room.

THE ADVENTURES OF AN AMERICAN
SPECIAL.

THIRD PAPER.

ated elephants. At the end of four columns of minutely described horrors, it was announced that of course the article was a hoax, but that in consequence of the carelessness of the Park officials, such a thing might happen at any time!

The American's restless, impetuous disposition is proverbial. Scarcely any of the Herald's readers took the trouble to wade through those four columns, but rushing into street and café, informed their neighbours of the terrible tidings. Women who had husbands in the city were in agony for hours, and in many cases the most appalling and disastrous results came from this cruel hoax. Some idea of the widespread dismay and panic occasioned may be gathered from the fact that the writer's mother, living in Bergen Point, twenty miles from the scene of the alleged outbreak, with the majestic Hudson between, had occasion to visit a neighbour. A large greyhound came bounding along the street as she reached her friend's house. One glance was enough. With a shriek of terror, she fled, tripped, and fainted.

Occasionally, 'sensation locals' are true in substance and fact, though names and dates may not be given. A case of the kind came under the writer's notice. 'Mr Blank,' said a well-known Bohemian one evening, 'would you like to know a burglar?'

'Rather an odd addition to one's stock of acquaintances, isn't it?' returned the writer. 'However, one may get something out of it.'

'CONDENSE, young man, condense. If you want to get on in life, condense.' These words were addressed to a young reporter by the venerable Horace Greeley, in the writer's hearing; and indeed the journal he established and conducted with honour and profit for so many years, was a happy illustration of his maxim. Nothing high or low was considered too unimportant to find admission; but the severe pencils of the night-editors assigned the item its proper space. Sometimes it happens that the ubiquitous special may ferret out something on his own account, by a strict promise of giving incident, but suppressing names or addresses. This is called 'sensation local' work, and is received with great caution by the editors. It is generally done by reporters who are on the extra staff of a journal, or who sell their locals wherever they can find a purchaser. Often as not, they are the result of a full brain and a needy pocket. Of this class was the vivid description of a Fenian plot to 'If half what this man says be true, it will burn Mr Ashbury's yacht the Cambria as she create a breeze,' said the writer's friend as they lay off Gowanus Bay; or the still more startling entered the hall. There he is at yonder table;' one entitled 'Barnacle Bill,' which appeared simul- pointing to a short, squarely-built man of about taneously in the New York Sun and the Boston forty, with a clean shaven face, good clothes, Post, if the writer's memory serves him. In and a profusion of jewellery. A quiet, respectthis thrilling and minutely circumstantial narra- able-looking man in the main, and not at all tive, it was roundly asserted that the loss of so a person that one would associate with midnight many steamships near Cape Race was due to crime. the presence of wreckers, who decoyed vessels with false lights.

So great a furor did this create at the time, that telegraphic communications were exchanged between the governments of Washington and Newfoundland, with the result that a British man-of-war was despatched to the bleak promontory of Cape Race on a fool's errand.

But far more serious for the people of New York was the one which the Herald wantonly inflicted on a credulous public. A special edition of the Herald one summer morning informed its readers that all the wild animals in Central Park had broken loose, and were tearing about the streets. This was followed by a graphic description of a fight between Commodore Vanderbilt, armed with a revolver, and a rhinoceros; while other local celebrities had desperate encounters with lions, tigers, and infuri

'More, perhaps, than you think,' returned his a sort of concert hall, within a stone's-throw of friend, as they walked towards Harry Hill's,' police headquarters, and the well-known resort of sporting-men, thieves, and abandoned characters. The place, however, was well conducted; and indeed, the secret of its success lay in the fact that its proprietor pandered to that morbid craving which some respectable people have of seeing vice without becoming a victim.

'How are you, Mr Kelly?' cried the writer's companion, addressing him carelessly. This is my friend, Mr Blank of the —.'

Mr Kelly expressed his gratification at meeting the writer, and invited him to drink at his expense.

The reader may wonder at this frankness of manner towards one who was avowedly an exposer of crime. But the fact of the matter is that your criminal is as greedy of appearing in the public print as any third or fourth rate exponent of the dramatic art. Their appetite for notoriety is insatiable. They long to pose as heroes, even though it may get their necks into a noose. It is this bombast and garrulous vanity which enable the police to pounce upon them so readily, and then surprise the public with accounts of their own sagacity in following up a clue. Every trade has its tricks, and the police force

'Police!' said Mr Kelly-police! what are they good for?' and he emptied his glass with an air of profound contempt. It need scarcely be said that some very carefully prepared remarks had been spoken in order to induce Mr Kelly to launch forth.

is no exception to the rule. At that time, Mr the cellar of a house next door. Breaking in, Kelly was not wanted for any particular job,' they descended to the back basement, which and he was consequently free and affable with they found completely undermined and tuneverybody. nelled towards the bank vaults. The cause of the strange noise was a small steam-engine working at a pressure which threatened every moment to burst the boiler. By the side of the engine lay one of the gang of burglars, intoxicated. The engine worked a drill which would in four hours more have penetrated to the vaults; and the robbers might have carried off with ease nearly a million of dollars. Had the man who was left in charge attended to his duty, and not allowed the boiler to get superheated, the success of the burglarious operations was assured.

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'Why, gentlemen,' he continued, what's the police good for? Some poor "gonoff," as hasn't enough money to square 'em, gets "lagged" for maybe five or six "stretches;" and the big uns don't get touched. Police!' he repeated again. 'There's that job at -'-mentioning the name of a jeweller on Broadway-why don't they find out who done that? They say he must have stole the things himself. Rubbish! There's that job on Long Island last week, and Staten Island the week before.'

'In fact,' said the writer, 'there are so many burglaries committed now, that one would think it was done by a regularly organised gang, as I believe has been hinted at in some of the papers.'

What would you think of the Burglars' Company, Limited?' he said with a merry twinkle in his eye-'comic idear, ain't it? with a paid-up capital of ten thousand dollars, and burglars' tools that would open any safe in the United States!'

'Splendid idea!' said the writer, laughing. 'I've a notion I'd write it up.'

'Do!' said Mr Kelly; and send it to old Kelso [the chief of police]; you could make good reading out of it. You might say there was one man as planned the whole thing, and that the gang was so well organised, they set the police force at defiance. Pitch into old Kelso, and tell him he ain't worth his salary. That'll make him as mad as a hatter, I reckon.-I could put you up to a wrinkle or two, if I had a mind to; for I've known a heap of queer characters, and they've given me away points that would make your hair stand on end.'

The writer expressed himself deeply obliged to Mr Kelly; and a conversation ensued, which resulted in his inviting us to his house to see his

'old woman.'

His old woman turned out to be a very handsome blonde of some eight-and-twenty, who immediately sent out for fried oysters and laid the table for supper. The house was well, if not elaborately furnished. Mr Kelly announced that he would move the first of May, as he intended to take a 'public' in the Ninth Ward. After a very pleasant evening, during which our host related a great many thrilling adventures, as done by some acquaintances of his in the cracksman line, we took our departure.

A month passed away. Burglaries and housebreaking still continued in Long Island and Brooklyn to an alarming extent, baffling all attempts of the police at detection.

Mere chance-that fatal bête noire of the criminal-led to the detection and exposure of Mr Kelly's Burglars' Company, Limited. They had hired the house next the bank for a year, paying the rent in advance, and announced that it would soon be opened as a first-class bakery and confection shop!

The result of the trial proved that there actually did exist an elaborate association of criminals, with a capital of six thousand dollars, represented by costly burglars' tools of every description. Mr Kelly had told very nearly the truth, having two objects in view the airing of his own vanity, and the indulgence of what is known in America as the game of Bluff at the expense of the police force. It is more than probable that Mr Kelly found himself watched by the police more than was agreeable, as, knowing his antecedents and associates, they would not give him credit for remaining idle. It is a notorious fact that by telling the truth, he hoodwinked them completely, and had chance not thwarted his plans, they must have been completely successful.

Mr Kelly is now, to the best of the writer's knowledge and belief, concentrating his genius on the severance of oakum strands or stonebreaking at Sing-Sing.

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On the way, two or three pleasant fellows, hired for the purpose, meeting the procession, demanded whose body it was. Being told his name-"Surely," replied one, "the world is well rid of him; he was a man of a very bad and vicious life; and his friends have cause to rejoice that he hath ended his days thus, rather than at the gallows!" Thereupon, the dead man

One Sunday afternoon, a policeman walking past either the Third or the Sixth Avenue Savings-bank-the writer has forgotten which rose on his bier, and told them they were wicked heard a peculiar throbbing. He summoned assistance; and found, on investigation, that the sounds came, not from the bank itself, but from

men to do him that wrong; and if he were alive again, he would teach them to speak better of the dead. But they proceeding to defame him, and

to give him much more disgraceful, contemptuous by reason of having been a dog himself in a language, he, not able to suffer it, leaped from former state of existence.-Reversing the process the bier, and fell about their ears with such rage of transformation, a patient in an American and fury, that he ceased not buffeting them until lunatic asylum insisted upon it that he had quite wearied; and by the violent agitation of been changed into a horse, made himself a tail the humours, his body being altered, he returned and attached himself to a wagon made out of out of the frayed ends of a rope, donned harness, to his right mind; and being brought home an old soap-box, and busied himself in dragging and refreshed with wholesome diet, within a few it about all day. He then carefully locked it days recovered both his health and his under- up with the carts of the establishment at night, standing.' and galloped off to a field, like a horse released from his labours. Like a steed of high-mettle, he never passed a wheelbarrow without shying at it.-A still more extraordinary freak of the imagination was displayed by a Frenchman, mad for the loss of his beloved wife. He was found standing in a large flower-pot, intent upon refreshing himself with the contents of a watering-pot, and informed his astonished friends that his wife had carried away a portion of his soul, leaving him only sufficient for a plant; he had consequently been transformed into a cypress, as they saw; and all he had to ask them was to lose no time in transplanting him in the cemetery grounds.

was to revert to him.

In Hone's Year Book we read of a farmer at
Stevenage, in Hertfordshire, who died in 1721, but
was not buried till 1751, thirty years afterwards.
This delay in the interment arose from a singular
delusion under which the farmer in the latter
years of his life had laboured.
In making his
will he bequeathed his estate, worth four hundred
pounds a year, to his two brothers, and, if they
should die, to his nephew, to be enjoyed by them
for thirty years, at the expiration of which time
he expected to return to life, when the estate
He ordered, therefore, that,
after his death, and with a view to his reappear-
ance at the end of the thirty years, his coffin
should not be put in the earth, but affixed on a
beam in his barn, locked, and the key dropped
through a hole into the coffin, that he might
unlock it from the inside and let himself out!
He was allowed four days' grace beyond the time
limited, and still refusing to present himself, his
remains were committed to mother earth.
Overwhelmed by the horrors he witnessed in
the unhappy time when

King Liberty, drunken and frantic,
Let Anarchy loose on his slaves,
And plundered and murdered his people,
Dancing on graves,

a famous Paris watchmaker became persuaded
that he had lost his head on the scaffold, and
that it had been put on a heap with those of
many other victims of revolutionary 'justice;'
but that the judges, growing merciful somewhat
late, had ordered the severed heads to be reunited
to their respective bodies, and by a mistake on
the part of the officer concerned in executing
the novel decree, another man's head had been
placed upon his shoulders, whereby he had ex-
changed an excellent set of teeth for a very
indifferent one. He was thought mad enough
to be confined in the Bicêtre, and there he might
have remained to the end of his days, but for
a lucky repartee made to him when he defended
the possibility of St Denis walking with his head
between his hands and continually kissing it.
'What a fool you must be to believe such a story,'
exclaimed a sceptical listener. "How could St
Denis kiss his own head; was it with his heels?'
The riddle was so unanswerable, that the madman
gave it up, and henceforth troubled himself about
nobody's head, not even his own, and before
long was sane enough to resume his old place
in the world.

Not very long since, there died in Paris a man named Viory, notable for stopping and talking to every dog he met in the streets; not out of an irrepressible affection for the friend of man, but as an act of condescension towards a subject. Sane enough to all appearance, Viory claimed to be the monarch of the canine race,

Not a few would-be sons-in-law of the Queen of England have had to be contented with appearing in court instead of at court; a fate that befell an aspirant for Her Majesty's own hand. In a case tried at Chicago, it was shown that James Love of that city was under the belief that Queen Victoria, with the Emperor Napoleon and his consort Eugenie, visited Chicago after the great fire there, and took up their quarters at the boarding-house in which Love was living. Seeing the Queen of England daily, he grew to adore her; and she in return worshipped him. Mr Disraeli favoured the match, and the English people approved it. But J. C. Knickerbocker also fell in love with the august lady, and so managed matters that Mr Love was debarred her presence. Nay, more. When Mr Love went for a marriage license, the clerk, on seeing the lady concerned was 'Victoria Guelph, Queen of England,' refused to grant him the license; and before long, Mr Love had to appear in court to vindicate his competency to manage his affairs. The illused man drew a touching picture of his devotion to the Queen, and of her unalterable affection for him. He averred that his diabolical foes had drugged his lady-love; and that a third candidate for her hand, named Cassel, had threatened her life with a hatchet, but failed to shake her resolution. He had appealed to the British people to rescue their sovereign; but they had unaccountably made no sign; and he implored the court to subpoena the object of his affections, who had, singularly enough, neglected to appear and corroborate his story.

even

For a man to be bewitched by a woman, is common; that he should like it, is common too; such being the case, one can hardly comprehend a man complaining of being bewitched by his wife, but that was the grievance with an Iowa farmer. Not that his trouble ended there; for his neighbours bewitched his pigs, or so he said; while the princess of witches, in the guise of the hired girl, set her uncanny subjects to call him foul names, gibe at him, and prick him with pins. In vain would he cover himself with blankets; his howling tormentors quickly pulled them off

again; they hunted him out of every cunningly at the nearest window-panes; until their faith devised hiding-place; and he dared never say 'Yes' or 'No,' in answer to a question, knowing they would not rest, or let him rest until he had eaten his own words.

Many a delusion has been aired in the Agony columns of the London newspapers, but never a more pitiable one than the following: 'MURDER !—Whereas, in consequence of evidence in my possession concerning divers murders, or suspected murders, committed in times past, I am under the painful apprehension that the strongest possible motives exist in certain quarters for destroying my life; and whereas I have good reason to suspect that drugs have been given to me at different times since July last, and in previous years, and that I am now in danger of being stricken down by poison, violence, or disease artificially created; and whereas I have recently suffered from sleeplessness and Dervous irritability, with muscular twitchings, ripplings of the blood, stiffening of the fingers, d., and am now suffering from incipient weakness of the chest :-I hereby offer an annuity of Fifty Pounds during my life-with full pardon, so far I may be able to secure it-to any person, who, recognising me from having been concerned in administering to me any noxious drug or poison, shall furnish such evidence as will prove A murderous intention on the instigators of this

crime.'

and patience were rewarded by seeing therein, not only swords and crosses, but deaths-heads, soldiers, nuns, cannon, and war-ships. A sceptical Genevan journalist set the appearances down to a kind of hypnotism, caused by long gazing on smoky window-panes burned by the sunshine; but believing Badeners looked upon them as omens of trouble to Fatherland; and sanguine Alsatians held them to be happy prognostics of the swift-coming revanche. Of course, nothing came of it all; the hallucination passed away; teaching its victims that seeing is not always believing, for when the mind goes wrong, the eye is not to be trusted.

THE FUTURE OF ROAD-TRAVELLING. WILL the time ever come when the main roads of the country will be once more used as they were in what we already call the 'old coaching-days,' for general traffic? A year or two ago, the question would have been answered immediately, positively, and perhaps impatiently, in the negative. To-day,

as we shall endeavour to show, there is considerable probability of those roads being again put, if not exclusively, at least to a very large extent, to the use for which they were originally intended. Of course, the railways are supposed to have completely monopolised the long-distance travelIt is a shade pleasanter, perhaps, to fancy someling. No one who wanted to go, say, into Yorkshire body has designs upon your life, than to imagine that you have yourself killed somebody; as was or Scotland, from London, would have thought, the case with an American engine-driver who half-a-dozen years ago, of adopting any other applied for a three months 'lay-off,' on the plea means of locomotion than that supplied at Euston that he was killing too many men on his run,' and King's Cross. Coaches and stage-wagons are acousing himself of a wholesale manslaughter, of practically extinct; for the expensive amusement which he was quite guiltless. For some occult which is now known as 'coaching' is useless to reason, American engine-drivers would seem to be the bona fide traveller; and they are few indeed bject to dangerous hallucinations. One had to who can derive much real pleasure from a steady be relegated to other duties because he was con-hundred-mile walk along one of our trunk-roads, stantly stopping his train for non-existent obstrucons on the track, or pulling up in the belief though a saunter through the bylanes is no doubt that very palpable bridges had gone altogether. a different thing. Another was always on the look-out for a black horse, which he averred was in the nightly habit of jumping on the line just ahead of him, and bading him in a race of several miles; and when, in his anxiety to overtake the phantom steed, be ran through a stopping station at the rate f fifty miles an hour, it was thought desirable give him a rest.-No masterless horse troubled he eye and mind of an old driver on the Central incis Railway; his phantom took the shape dan Indian warrior mounted on a white horse, aering along the prairie beside the track, racing with the train, unheedful of the firein's lumps of coal, and the shots from the evolver of the imaginative driver.

That the fireman should be infected with his te's delusion was nothing wonderful. Madness this sort is very catching, or where would the eputation of Lourdes be? Some imaginative dividual saw, or fancied he saw, the windowanes of the houses in Rustadt suddenly emzoned with crosses, swords, and other signifiint emblems; and soon the natives of Baden, Merish Bavaria, Alsace, and Lorraine thought little else but the strange signs and tokens, ad left their work undone, to gaze for hours

There

But matters have changed very greatly during the past half-dozen years, and are destined, we firmly believe, to change still more remarkably during the years immediately before us. are now numbers of men in London who, if they wanted to visit Yorkshire, or even Scotland, would eschew the iron-road, and take to the Macadam, mounted, not on horse-flesh, but on steel, and deriving from their own muscular legs the force required for travelling at the rate of eighty or a hundred or even more miles per diem. But although the once rare bicycle has now penetrated to every hamlet, and has conquered the once powerful prejudice against it, we are well aware that it can never effect the revolution in travelling of which we spoke in our first sentence. 'Cyclists' are increasing at a wonderfully rapid rate; and we are persuaded that the takings of the railway Companies must be considerably less than they would be if bicycles were unknown. But it is of course only the young and vigorous male portion of the community, who can utilise it for long-distance travelling.

It is to the tricycle, in some of the many forms it is now assuming, that we look as the

travelling-carriage of the future. Within a very short time it has come extensively into use; and as it is available for ladies as well as gentlemen, and is safe and steady for old as well as young, while the clergyman and doctor can use it without that sacrifice of dignity which is supposed to be involved in the use of the bicycle, it will be seen that the tricycle appeals to a very wide constituency indeed. It is impossible to say how many of these useful machines are already in use, and it is equally impossible for the candid critic to affirm which of the countless patterns in vogue is the best. It is enough to say that a person of average strength can with practice propel himself (or herself) over ordinary roads at the rate of six, eight, or even ten miles per hour, without any extraordinary exertion or fatigue; while if two club together and sit side by side on a sociable,' the labour is considerably diminished. What pleasanter mode of spending a holiday can there be than for a man to take his wife through the country in this fashion? The luggage is strapped behind; you start at what hour you please, taking whatever route you prefer; you halt when and where it suits you, and have no trouble with your horse when the day's journey is done. The travelling costs you nothing, unless it be a few pence for turnpikes. You save your railway fare; and you see more of the country than you could possibly do in any other way; while the moderate exercise-which you need never permit to become irksome-will do you a thousand times more good than lounging on the sands or rushing over the continent.

Still, we admit, we have not proved our point. The question is, whether these modes of locomotion will ever supplant in any large degree our present method. We acknowledge that so long as any physical labour whatever has to be performed in the propulsion of tricycles, they will not come into universal use. Let us not forget, however, that in many districts where railway accommodation is nil or defective, they are used very extensively for business as well as pleasure. Postmen and doctors especially, have taken readily to this method of locomotion. But inventions are in progress, and have indeed been already perfected, which promise to take the tricycle out of the category of velocipedes or foot-worked machines, and give it a far greater value and importance.

It is well known that one of the first uses that M. Faure made of his new discoveries relating to the storage of electricity was to propel a tricycle, and the speed he then obtained was ten miles per hour; and in this connection it appears as though the French, who were the first to introduce the modern bicycle about fourteen years ago, will be the first to manufacture its direct descendant through a clearly traceable evolution, the Electric Tricycle. With such a machine, supposing that the cost of producing the power be not prohibitive, we can foresee the day when the family party will journey down to Brighton on a fine afternoon by road instead of rail; when the splendid main roads of our country will again be thronged with travellers moving along easily, safely, and inexpensively, not in swaying coaches, but in smoothly rolling tricycles; when the old Red Lion and Blue Boar, deserted these last forty years, will

again become gay and busy; and when the long neglected villages and bylanes will be explored by tourists who will never want to catch a train.

INSECTS ON THE SURFACE OF ORANGES.

When a dish of oranges is seen on the table for dessert, the fact is hardly realised that in all probability their surface is the habitat of an insect of the Coccus family. This tiny creature is found on the orange skin in every stage of transformation, from the egg to the perfect insect, during the winter months, instead of remaining dormant in the cold weather, as is the case with most of the insect tribe. It would hardly be possible to find a St Michael's or Tangerine orange that had not hundreds of these little creatures in various stages of development on their surface. Lemons, too, are frequently covered. Upon inspection, the skin of an orange will be found to be dotted over with brownish scarlet spots of various sizes. These specks can be easily removed by a needle; and when placed under a microscope, an interesting scene is presented, consisting of a large number of eggs, which are oval white bodies, standing on end, like little bags of flour, some of the inhabitants of which may very probably be seen in process of emerging from the opened end of the egg. The female insect upon leaving the egg has six legs, two long hair-like appendages, and no wings; it thrusts a sucker into the orange in order to obtain nourishment, and never moves again, passing through the various stages of development until it lays its eggs and dies. In the case of the male insect, the chrysalis after a short period opens the insect flies off. The male is supplied with wings twice the length of its body, and each of the legs has a hook-like projection. It has fous eyes and two antennæ, and is so tiny that it cannot be seen when flying.

and

From some parts of Spain, oranges come to having their rind covered with a coccus of quite a different type. The surface of oranges, indeed affords the possessor of a microscope an infinit amount of interest and amusement.

THE MIR K.

WHEN snaw lay deep upon the brae,
Or drifted owre the lanesome moor,
A waste around the cottage door
Where ance the bloom o' heather lay,
The bairnies, tired o' laugh an' play,

Would singin' gang to sleep at night;
While in the pane I'd place a light
To guide the wanderer aright,
That in the mirk might lose his way.

Now thirty years ha'e fled this day,

Since last I heard the bairnies' sang,
Yet every bush where birds are thrang
Brings back again the simple lay,
That never mair will cheer the brae;

For on my hame there fell a blight-
My bonnie singers a' took flight:
O shine on me, Thou Beacon-light,
Lest in the mirk I lose my way!

SARAH MOIR ROBERTSON

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Pat noster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURG

All Rights Reserved.

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