he middle of the floor sat, like the Grand Lama, the insignificant
I of the owner, astonished at the contemplation of his own features.
At his next visit he fancied he must have got into a narrow
needlecase, full of sharp needles: "Oh," thought he, "this must be the
heart of an old maid;" but such was not the fact; it belonged to a
young officer, who wore several orders, and was said to be a man of
intellect and heart.

The poor volunteer came out of the last heart in the row quite
bewildered. He could not collect his thoughts, and imagined his
foolish fancies had carried him away. "Good gracious!" he sighed, "I
must have a tendency to softening of the brain, and here it is so
exceedingly hot that the blood is rushing to my head." And then
suddenly recurred to him the strange event of the evening before, when
his head had been fixed between the iron railings in front of the
hospital. "That is the cause of it all!" he exclaimed, "I must do
something in time. A Russian bath would be a very good thing to
begin with. I wish I were lying on one of the highest shelves." Sure
enough, there he lay on an upper shelf of a vapor bath, still in his
evening costume, with his boots and goloshes on, and the hot drops
from the ceiling falling on his face. "Ho!" he cried, jumping down and
rushing towards the plunging bath. The attendant stopped him with a
loud cry, when he saw a man with all his clothes on. The volunteer
had, however, presence of mind enough to whisper, "It is for a wager;"
but the first thing he did, when he reached his own room, was to put a
large blister on his neck, and another on his back, that his crazy fit
might be cured. The next morning his back was very sore, which was all
he gained by the goloshes of Fortune.

THE CLERK'S TRANSFORMATION

The watchman, whom we of course have not forgotten, thought, after
a while, of the goloshes which he had found and taken to the hospital;
so he went and fetched them. But neither the lieutenant nor any one in
the street could recognize them as their own, so he gave them up to
the police. "They look exactly like my own goloshes," said one of
the clerks, examining the unknown articles, as they stood by the
side of his own. "It would require even more than the eye of a
shoemaker to know one pair from the other."

"Master clerk," said a servant who entered with some papers. The
clerk turned and spoke to the man; but when he had done with him, he
turned to look at the golos