his expense from the hotel to his residence, a few squares away, and was duly equipped with a battery and instruments. He soon became a proficient in the art, manipulating a key very nicely and reading by sound quite well. One of his favorite pastimes was to call up David, and say: “See if you can get this?” And then he would send some word like “Cicero,” “Coerce,” “Cycle,” etc., with a disregard for spaces which rendered their being read a matter of no little difficulty. But as these words were usually pointed out to him by Mr. Twist as the thorns in the operators’ daily path, David usually anticipated what was coming, and in telegraphic parlance he had never yet been “stuck.” One day, the gentleman, who possessed some brains of his own, and who had given attention recently to the problem of spaces, came in and said: “I think I have got you now, David, and I’ll bet you a bottle of champagne I’ll ‘stick’ you?” Twist, who had been a frequent recipient of choice cigars and other luxuries at the hands of his friend, was willing to make the wager, though he expected to lose it, and quickly put forth his hand, and thus the compact was celebrated. The gentleman departed, and in about five minutes he was heard calling, and David answering him. Then came a gust of dots in which no letter was distinguishable except a “d” on the end. David opened the circuit and said very slowly, in imitation of an office boy who sometimes shook a key “for his own amazement,” as Mrs. Partington would say, “I didn’t get that. Wait a minute and Twist will be at leisure. Is now busy with New York.” Taking a pencil David figured a minute on what he had heard, and feeling confident he had worked it out, he called his friend and said very impatiently: “i i ga—T.” Again the gust of dots with the letter “d,” and David flashes back: “Ha! ha! Icicle reiced,” which was quite correct. And afterward there sat in a Camden parlor one evening, a mischievous fellow with merrily dancing eyes, which looked lovingly down at a bumper of effervescing spirits as it bubbled at his lips. There may have been remorse in his breast sometimes at the deception he had practiced, but on this particular day, if any had lingered until then, it vanished to the tuneful clink

For a fortnight there had been a mystery connected with a fashionable boarding house at Maguffinsville, which had well nigh proven the death of a number of nervous people in the house. The story of the mystery went abroad, too, and in all directions for several blocks away; certain superstitious ones had contracted a habit of looking back at the house as they shot past it, much as Tam O’Shanter is thought to have looked back at the witches as his steed plunged into the night, and the festive old girls came riding on their broomsticks in hot pursuit. The cause of this difficulty was the arrival, early in the month, of a newly-married couple. The gentleman is described as a pleasant and lively fellow, and the wife as a frolicsome and winning creature, who looked as if her husband had always been all tenderness and love. Their relations at the table, in the parlor after tea, at church, at the theater, everywhere, in fine, where they have been seen together, were apparently harmonious, and those who did not know of the dark mystery lurking about their private lives, were impressed by their manner with the belief that they were very much in love, and certainly very much devoted to each other. No irregularity in their decorum had ever been noticed except in the morning. But along about the hour of rosy sunrise, when the boarders were “getting in their big licks” and snoring peacefully, there would come from the region of this couple’s room the most singular sounds, which were kept up for an hour or so. These were followed uniformly by a lull, and then the pair would come down to breakfast as happy and peaceful in their seeming as the gentle dove. As the time passed things grew worse and worse, and no ray of light was let in to soften the increasing blackness. The boarders, who, on hearing loud threats and lamentations, had only sat up in bed with their hair on end till matters quieted down, began now to gather in the corridors in scant attire, armed with shovels, tongs, curling-irons, Kehoe clubs, screwdrivers and fluting-irons, as charges of infidelity and the assurance in a male voice, that he would not shed her blood, followed by the ringing declaration—“Yet she must die!” pierced their unhappy ears. Then would follow a woman’s screams, and a man’s hoarse tones, evidently thick with passion. Anon, what sounded like a man seizing a woman by the hair and dragging her about the room, upsetting by the process the washstand, and such other articles as were within reach, coupled with her prayers and entreaties to desist, became the regular accompaniment of the “cock’s shrill clarion,” and the explosions which warn mankind of our approach towards the warm precincts of the cheerful day. This sort of business couldn’t go on forever without an investigation, of course, and it didn’t. One morning last week, when the indications convinced all present that murder most foul was to be perpetrated, a minion of the law was summoned, who, on