emporary despondency?

Witness: Not so far as I am aware. His financial position was
exceptionally favorable.

Coroner: There had been no quarrel with Miss Brent?

Witness: I have the best authority for saying that no shadow of
difference had ever come between them.

Coroner: Was the deceased left-handed?

Witness: Certainly not. He was not even ambidextrous.

A Juryman: Isn't Shoppinhour one of the infidel writers, published by
the Freethought Publication Society?

Witness: I do not know who publishes his books.

The Juryman (a small grocer and big raw-boned Scotchman, rejoicing in
the name of Sandy Sanderson and the dignities of deaconry and membership
of the committee of the Bow Conservative Association): No equeevocation,
sir. Is he not a secularist, who has lectured at the Hall of Science?

Witness: No, he is a foreign writer--(Mr. Sanderson was heard to thank
Heaven for this small mercy)--who believes that life is not worth
living.

The Juryman: Were you not shocked to find the friend of a meenister
reading such impure leeterature?

Witness: The deceased read everything. Schopenhauer is the author of a
system of philosophy, and not what you seem to imagine. Perhaps you
would like to inspect the book? (Laughter.)

The Juryman: I would na' touch it with a pitchfork. Such books should be
burnt. And this Madame Blavatsky's book--what is that? Is that also
pheelosophy?

Witness: No. It is Theosophy. (Laughter.)

Mr. Allen Smith, secretary of the Trammel's Union, stated that he had
had an interview with the deceased on the day before his death, when he
(the deceased) spoke hopefully of the prospects of the movement, and
wrote him out a check for 10 guineas for his union. Deceased promised to
speak at a meeting called for a quarter past seven a.m. the next day.

Mr. Edward Wimp, of the Scotland Yard Detective Department, said that
the letters and papers of the deceased threw no light upon the manner of
his death, and they would be handed back to the family. His Department
had not formed any theory on the subject.

The Coroner proceeded to sum up the evidence. "We have to deal,
gentlemen," he said, "with a most incomprehensible and mysterious case,
the details of which are yet astonishingly simple. On the morning of
Tuesday, the 4th inst., Mrs. Drabdump, a worthy, hard-working widow, who
lets lodgings at 11 Grover Street, Bow, was unable to arouse the
deceased, who occupied the entire upper floor of th