they
are as wrong as they usually are when they speak of me. I learn
there was a bit of a flutter in the market while we were away
yesterday, and I am glad to say that my brokers, who are sharp
men, did me a good turn or two. I often wonder why these flurries come,
but I suppose it is to let a man pick up some sound stocks at a
reasonable rate, if he has the money by him. Perhaps they are also sent
to teach humility to those who might else become purse-proud. We are
but finite creatures, Sneed, here to-day and gone to-morrow. How
foolish a thing is pride! And that reminds me that if your two
daughters should happen to think as I do on the uncertainty of riches,
I wish you would ask them to call. I have done up those securities in a
sealed package and given the parcel to my daughter-in-law. She has no
idea what the value of it is, but thinks it a little present from me to
your girls. If, then, they should happen to call, she will hand it to
them; if not, I shall use the contents to found a college for the
purpose of teaching manners to young women whose grandfather used to
feed pigs for a living, as indeed my own grandfather did. Should the
ladies happen to like each other, I think I can put you on to a deal
next week that will make up for Friday. I like you, Sneed, but you have
no head for business. Seek my advice oftener.

Ever yours,
DRUCE.

The Sneed girls called on Mrs. Edward Druce.

TRANSFORMATION.

If you grind castor sugar with an equal quantity of chlorate of potash,
the result is an innocent-looking white compound, sweet to the taste,
and sometimes beneficial in the case of a sore throat. But if you dip a
glass rod into a small quantity of sulphuric acid, and merely touch the
harmless-appearing mixture with the wet end of the rod, the dish which
contains it becomes instantly a roaring furnace of fire, vomiting forth
a fountain of burning balls, and filling the room with a dense, black,
suffocating cloud of smoke.

So strange a combination is that mystery which we term Human Nature,
that a touch of adverse circumstance may transform a quiet, peaceable,
law-abiding citizen into a malefactor whose heart is filled with a
desire for vengeance, stopping at nothing to accomplish it.

In a little narrow street off the broad Rue de Rennes, near the great
terminus of Mont-Parnasse, stood the clock-making shop of the brothers
De