man. He has
the strength of a dozen men. The sturdy lumbermen at last gain the
advantage over him. Suddenly he throws up his hands and pitches forward
upon the floor of the shanty--dead.

They could never understand--the simple lumbermen--why the life of the
merry, light-hearted hunter of the party came to an end so suddenly on
the eve of Christmas Day. He was well the day before, they said, in
perfect health, but he went mad on the eve of Christmas Day, and in the
morning died.

THE PARASANGS

My friends, the Parasangs, both died last week. Mr. Parasang was carried
off by a slight attack of pneumonia as dust is wiped away by a cloth,
and Mrs. Parasang followed him within three days. He was in life a
rather energetic man, and she always lagged a little behind him when
they went abroad walking together, keeping pretty close to him,
notwithstanding. So it was in death. It was the shock of the thing, they
say, that killed her, she lacking any great strength; but to me it seems
to have been chiefly force of habit and the effect of what romantic
people call being in love. She was in love with her husband, as he had
been with her. And what was the use of staying here, he gone?

They were buried together, and I was one of the pall-bearers at the
double funeral; indeed, I was the directing spirit, having been so
connected with the Parasangs that I was their close friend, and the
person to whom every one naturally turned in the adjustment of matters
concerning them. When Mr. Parasang died, the first instinct of his wife
was to tell them to send for me, and when I reached their home--for I
was absent from the city--I found that she had clung to and followed
him as usual, as he liked it to be. It was what he lived for as long as
he could live at all.

They had ordered a fine coffin for Parasang, and when I came he was
lying in it. Mrs. Parasang was lying where she had died, in bed. And
they had ordered another fine coffin for her. (Of course, when I refer
to the bodies as Mr. and Mrs. Parasang it must be understood that I
consider only the earthly tenements, for I am a religious man.) I did
not like it. I went to the undertaker and asked him if he could not make
a coffin for two. He answered that it was somewhat of an unusual order,
that there were styles and fashions in coffins just as there are in
shoes and hats and things of that sort, and that it would be a difficult
work for him to accomplish, in addition to bei