arnestness
of truth as his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my
thoughts into hopeless confusion. I saw the conductor looking at me.
I said, "Who is that man?"

"He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in
a snow-drift in the cars, and like to have been starved to death. He got
so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of
something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three
months afterward. He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when
he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole
car-load of people he talks about. He would have finished the crowd by
this time, only he had to get out here. He has got their names as pat as
A B C. When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says: 'Then
the hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived; and there
being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no
objections offered, I resigned. Thus I am here.'"

I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to
the harmless vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a
bloodthirsty cannibal.

THE KILLING OF JULIUS CAESAR "LOCALIZED"--[Written about 1865.]

Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the
Roman "Daily Evening Fasces," of the date of that tremendous occurrence.

Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as
gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder and writing
them up with aggravating circumstantiality. He takes a living delight in
this labor of love--for such it is to him, especially if he knows that
all the other papers have gone to press, and his will be the only one
that will contain the dreadful intelligence. A feeling of regret has
often come over me that I was not reporting in Rome when Caesar was
killed--reporting on an evening paper, and the only one in the city, and
getting at least twelve hours ahead of the morning-paper boys with this
most magnificent "item" that ever fell to the lot of the craft. Other
events have happened as startling as this, but none that possessed so
peculiarly all the characteristics of the favorite "item" of the present
day, magnified into grandeur and sublimity by the high rank, fame, and
social and political standing of the actors in it.

However, as I was not permitted to report Caesar's assassination in t