s it now_"

Aris Throckmorton, its manager in the Thirties, the Forties and the
Fifties, was a personality and a personage. The handsomest of men
and the most illiterate, he exemplified the characteristics and
peculiarities of the days of the river steamer and the stage coach, when
"mine host" felt it his duty to make the individual acquaintance of his
patrons and each and severally to look after their comfort. Many stories
are told at his expense; of how he made a formal call upon Dickens--it
was, in point of fact, Marryatt--in his apartment, to be coolly told
that when its occupant wanted him he would ring for him; and of how,
investigating a strange box which had newly arrived from Florida, the
prevailing opinion being that the live animal within was an alligator,
he exclaimed, "Alligator, hell; it's a scorponicum." He died at length,
to be succeeded by his son John, a very different character. And thereby
hangs a tale.

John Throckmorton, like Aris, his father, was one of the handsomest
of men. Perhaps because he was so he became the victim of one of the
strangest of feminine whimsies and human freaks. There was a young girl
in Louisville, named Ellen Godwin. Meeting him at a public ball she fell
violently in love with him. As Throckmorton did not reciprocate this,
and refused to pursue the acquaintance, she began to dog his footsteps.
She dressed herself in deep black and took up a position in front of the
Galt House, and when he came out and wherever he went she followed him.
No matter how long he stayed, when he reappeared she was on the spot and
watch. He took himself away to San Francisco. It was but the matter of a
few weeks when she was there, too. He hied him thence to Liverpool, and
as he stepped upon the dock there she was. She had got wind of his going
and, having caught an earlier steamer, preceded him.

Finally the War of Sections arrived. John Throckmorton became a
Confederate officer, and, being able to keep her out of the lines,
he had a rest of four years. But, when after the war he returned to
Louisville, the quarry began again.

He was wont to call her "Old Hell's Delight." Finally, one night, as he
was passing the market, she rushed out and rained upon him blow after
blow with a frozen rabbit.

Then the authorities took a hand. She was arraigned for disorderly
conduct and brought before the Court of Police. Then the town, which
knew nothing of the case and accepted her goings on as proof of