allow that he
had written a squib, proudly fired in the air; Mr. Stuart took no aim,
and yet killed his man. When the deed was done, the murderer, frantic,
and 'dissolved in all the tenderness of an infant,' reproached himself
with exquisite simplicity that he had not taken aim, '_for if he had, he
was certain he would have missed him!_' whilst the dying man expressed a
corresponding anxiety lest 'he had not made his fire in the air appear
so decided as he could have wished.' So men speak and act who take leave
of their reason to play the fool in the high court of honor! A line
tells the rest of the history. Sir Alexander is removed from the field
and taken to the house of a friend. Mr. Stuart flies to the house of his
friend, runs into a room, shuts the door, sits down in agony of mind,
and bursts into tears. In due time he is put on his trial for murder,
the jury unanimously find him _Not Guilty_, and Lord Chief Justice Clerk
congratulates him on the verdict, although five minutes before he had
deliberately stated that 'duels are but illustrious murders,' and that
'no false punctilio or notion of honor can vindicate an act which
terminates fatally to another fellow-creature.'"

THE LATE DR. TROOST.

We recently noticed the death of the excentric German professor, Dr.
Troost, of Tennessee. His passion for all animals of the serpent kind
was well known, and we find it illustrated in this anecdote, related by
Sir Charles Lyell:

"Every thing of the serpent kind he has a particular fancy for, and has
always a number of them--that he has tamed--in his pockets or under his
waistcoat. To loll back in his rocking-chair, to talk about geology, and
pat the head of a large snake, when twining itself about his neck, is to
him supreme felicity. Every year in the vacation he makes an excursion
to the hills, and I was told that, upon one of these occasions, being
taken up by the stage-coach, which had several members of Congress in it
going to Washington, the learned Doctor took his seat on the top with a
large basket, the lid of which was not over and above well secured. Near
to this basket sat a Baptist preacher on his way to a great public
immersion. His reverence, awakening from a reverie he had fallen into,
beheld to his unutterable horror two rattlesnakes raise their fearful
heads out of the basket, and immediately precipitated himself upon the
driver, who, almost knocked off his seat, no sooner became apprised of