was there that I should be happy." Three
passenger cars, and ten freight cars, as was then the vicious custom of
that road, passed me. But I held on, repeating to myself texts of
Scripture to give me courage. As the last car passed, I was whirled into
the air by the rebound of the rafter. "Heavens!" I said, "if my orbit is
a hyperbola, I shall never return to earth." Hastily I estimated its
ordinates, and calculated the curve. What bliss! It was a parabola!
After a flight of a hundred and seventeen cubits, I landed, head down,
in a soft mud-hole.

In that train was the young U. S. Grant, on his way to West Point for
examination. But for me the armies of the Republic would have had no
leader.

I pressed my claim, when I asked to be appointed to England. Although no
one else wished to go, I alone was forgotten. Such is gratitude with
republics!

He ceased. Then Sarah Blatchford told

THE WHEELER AND WILSON'S OPERATIVE'S STORY.

My father had left the anchorage of Sorrento for a short voyage, if
voyage it may be called. Life was young, and this world seemed heaven.
The yacht bowled on under close-reefed stay-sails, and all was happy.
Suddenly the corsairs seized us: all were slain in my defence; but
I,--this fatal gift of beauty bade them spare my life!

Why linger on my tale! In the Zenana of the Shah of Persia I found my
home. "How escape his eye?" I said; and, fortunately, I remembered that
in my reticule I carried one box of F. Kidder's indelible ink. Instantly
I applied the liquid in the large bottle to one cheek. Soon as it was
dry, I applied that in the small bottle, and sat in the sun one hour. My
head ached with the sunlight, but what of that? I was a fright, and I
knew all would be well.

I was consigned, so soon as my hideous deficiencies were known, to the
sewing-room. Then how I sighed for my machine! Alas! it was not there;
but I constructed an imitation from a cannon-wheel, a coffee-mill, and
two nut-crackers. And with this I made the under-clothing for the palace
and the Zenana.

I also vowed revenge. Nor did I doubt one instant how; for in my youth I
had read Lucretia Borgia's memoirs, and I had a certain rule for slowly
slaying a tyrant at a distance. I was in charge of the shah's own linen.
Every week, I set back the buttons on his shirt collars by the width of
one thread; or, by arts known to me, I shrunk the binding of the collar
by a like proportion. Tighter and tighter with each week did