ghing insanely and weeping piteously in the same breath, in
the same word; running it up and down the gamut in an uncontrolled and
uncontrollable way; now whooping like a savage, and now sobbing like the
last breath of a broken-hearted. "Samuel! Sam-u-el! O Samuel! Ha! ha!
ha! h-a-a! Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h! You won't leave me to die alone! After the
wife I've been to you, you won't leave me to die alone! No-o-o-o-o!
HOO-HOO-oo-OO! You musn't. You shan't. Send Jonas, and you stay by me!
Think--" here her breath died away, and for a moment she seemed really
to be dying. "Think," she gasped, and then sank away again. After a
minute she opened her eyes, and, with characteristic pertinacity, took
up the sentence just where she had left off. She had carefully kept her
place throughout the period of unconsciousness. But now she spoke, not
with a gasp, but in that shrill, unnatural falsetto so characteristic of
hysteria; that voice--half yell--that makes every nerve of the listener
jangle with the discord. "Think, oh-h-h Samuel! why won't you think what
a wife I've been to you? Here I've drudged and scrubbed and scrubbed and
drudged all these years like a faithful and industrious wife, never
neglecting my duty. And now--oh-h-h-h--now to be left alone in my--"
Here she ceased to breathe again for a while. "In my last hours to die,
to die! to die with, out--without--Oh-h-h!" What Mrs. Anderson was left
to die without she never stated. Mr. Anderson had beckoned to Jonas when
he came in, and that worthy had gone off in a leisurely trot to get the
"steam-doctor."

[Illustration: "CORN-SWEATS AND CALAMUS."]

Dr. Ketchup had been a blacksmith, but bard work disagreed with his
constitution. He felt that he, was made for something better than
shoeing horses. This ambitious thought was first suggested to him by the
increasing portliness of his person, which, while it made stooping over
a horse's hoof inconvenient, also impressed him with the fact that his
aldermanic figure would really adorn a learned profession. So he bought
one of those little hand-books which the founder of the Thomsonian
system sold dirt-cheap at twenty dollars apiece, and which told how to
cure or kill in every case. The owners of these important treasures of
invaluable information were under bonds not to disclose the profound
secrets therein contained, the fathomless wisdom which taught them how
to decide in any given case whether ginseng or a corn-sweat was the
required