no less than walk out to where Hankus was standing and give him my attention. He proceeded immediately to business.

“Do you observe anything wrong about these visuals of mine?” he asked.

“A little bloodshot, perhaps,” I replied.

“Oh, no, not that. I mean anything queer—off, you know—snakes, or anything like that?”

I assured him that I did not, whereupon he said: “Give me your fist; don’t know you, but you know me, and that settles it. I want to talk to you confidentially. I thought I seen a ghost here a little bit ago. You know Eity—‘the boy, George’—the only Eitemiller. Well, sir, I was standing right over there a little while ago and in he walked. Not limping, mind you, like he used to, but straight as a string. Two good, gallus legs as mine are, plug hat, good clothes, and faked up till you can’t rest.”

I told him that Mr. Eitemiller was in Hartford, but he said he “wouldn’t have it. Couldn’t fool him—known the boy too long.

“Did you speak with him?” I inquired.

“Well, now, I weaken. I thought he was a ghost, and I just stood and stared at him, but he never tumbled to me. Gave me the dead shake, and kinder took me in as much as to say, ‘Why I don’t know you from a side of sole leather.’ ”

At this juncture Hankus gave a sudden start, and striking an attitude that would do honor to Mr. Booth when the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears, he said. “Look there—take in that fresh leg.”

I looked, and saw just stepping out of the elevator, Mr. Harry Hyde, of the Auditor’s Department, the gentleman whose striking resemblance to the man who never “lost his grip,” except for one brief hour at the Hoboken ball match, has surprised many before and since Mr. Gowanus came on from Ohio to participate in the wedding festivities, dine at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and lay for ghosts and goblins.

The good people of Maguffinsville who attend the First Congregational Church were all disappointed last Sunday, for Mrs. Carver, their sweet soprano, was absent from her accustomed place in the choir. Many are the Sabbaths that have glided into the past since Mrs. Carver, then a blushing bride, came to captivate all ears and win all hearts by her tones of bell-like melody and the thousand graces which inform her gentle nature; but many as they had been, never before had she been numbered among the absentees. The previous evening Mr. Carver brought home, among other concomitants of a frugal banquet, a bottle of horse-radish and he observed, as he upset the milk in the pickles in an attempt to uncork the bottle with a cleaver, that he was satisfied that he had got something now of a genuine and appetizing quality. When the bottle was opened, and the dried beef had been passed, Mr. Carver helped himself sparingly to the fiery compound, and ejaculated in tones of evident disgust, “Turnips, by Jingo! and that precious grocery keeper warranted it pure. Pure turnips, more likely.” Mrs. Carver, now all compassion, tested the compound. She bailed out a teaspoonful and closed her pretty lips over it with all the dear simplicity of beguiled, maltreated, but ever trusting womankind. And as her eyes began to protrude, Carver thought he had perpetrated a great joke. The horseradish was first proof, and would have burnt a hole through an Orange county cheese inside of seven seconds. Mrs. Carver threw her head back and her feet forward and fell to so steadfastly contemplating the kitchen ceiling, that Carver thought she fancied it hard finish, and had just discovered her error, so he stopped laughing suddenly and went over to ask her about it. The demonstrations for the next three hours were rather vigorous, and Mrs. Carver sang several new airs in a key even higher than usual, and succeeded in astonishing her most ardent admirers who quickly assembled and the feminine portion of whom got her safely to bed. Meanwhile a youthful physician took it out of Carver by sending him after such a medley of curatives at such a medley of places as were never fetched before. But morning dawned at last, and the poor joker, emaciated,