on't leave me all alone, please,
please don't, for I'm falling again, fast, faster all the time, an' I'll
soon fall--"

She opened her eyes wide--wider than ever. She looked into Mr.
Dootleby's face and smiled. She lifted her hand and dropped it heavily
into his. Her head dropped on his shoulder. She had fallen--out of human
sight!

V.

THE HON. DOYLE O'MEAGHER.

At this particular moment the Hon. Doyle O'Meagher is a busy man.
Tammany Hall's nominating convention is shortly to be held, and Mr.
O'Meagher is putting the finishing touches upon the ticket which he has
decided that the convention shall adopt. The ticket, written down upon a
sheet of paper, is before him, together with a bottle of whisky and a
case of cigars, and the finishing touches consist of little pencil-marks
placed opposite the candidates' names, indicating that they have visited
Mr. O'Meagher and have duly paid over their several campaign
assessments--a preliminary formality which Mr. O'Meagher enforces with
strict impartiality. The amount of each assessment depends entirely upon
Mr. O'Meagher's sense of the fitness of things. To dispute Mr.
O'Meagher's sense in this particular is looked upon as treason and
rebellion. In the case of the Hon. Thraxton Wimples, the intended
candidate for the Supreme Court, the assessment is $20,000.

Mr. Wimples is a little man of profound learning and ancient lineage.
Mr. O'Meagher is a man of indifferent learning and no lineage to speak
of. Mr. Wimples's grandfather had signed the Declaration of
Independence, and had moved on three separate occasions that the
Continental Congress do now adjourn, while no reason whatever existed,
other than the one most obvious but least apt to occur to any one, for
supposing that Mr. O'Meagher had ever had a grandfather at all. And yet,
as Mr. Wimples, though on the threshold of great dignity and power,
walks into Mr. O'Meagher's presence, he find himself all of a tremble,
and glows and chills chase each other up and down his spinal column.

"Ah, Mr. O'Meagher," he says, "good-morning! Good-morning! Happy to see
you so--er--well. Charming day, so warm for the--er--season."

"Yes," says Mr. O'Meagher, "so it be."

"I received your notification of the high--er--honor, you propose to
confer on me."

"Yes," says Mr. O'Meagher, "you're the man for the place."

"So kind of you to--er--say so. You mentioned that the--er--assessment
was--"

"Twenty thousand dollars," s