Chapter 14

"You ask me to send you a phonographic cylinder and to say a few words to the audience. I do not think the audience would take any interest in dry scientific subjects, but perhaps they might be interested in a little story that a man sent me on a phonographic cylinder the other day from San Francisco. In the year 1873 a man from Massachusetts came to California with a chronic liver complaint. He searched all over the coast for a mineral spring to cure the disease, and finally he found, down in the San Joaquin valley, a spring the waters of which almost instantly cured him. He therefore started a sanitarium, and people all over the world came and were quickly cured. Last year this man died, and so powerful had been the action of the waters that they had to take his liver out and kill it with a club.--EDISON."--_Woman's Home Companion._

A SILVER-PLATED CAT.

A remarkable freak of lightning occurred some time ago near the small village of New Salem, Vermont. Arent S. Vandyck occupies an old mansion, in the parlor of which hung a collection of Revolutionary swords, one of which was heavily plated with silver. On the night in question a terrific thunderstorm burst, and one particularly heavy crash stunned every one in the house.

Quickly recovering, the family hastened to see what damage had been done. Suddenly the youngest Vandyck pointed to an old-fashioned sofa. There lay what seemed to be a silver cat, curled up as comfortable as could be. Each glittering hair was separate and distinct, and each silvery bristle of the whiskers described as graceful a curve as if in life.

Turning to the sword on the wall just above the sofa, father and son remarked that the plated sword had been stripped of all its silver, the scabbard was a strip of blackened steel and the hilt had gone altogether.

The family cat had been electroplated by lightning. A round hole in the window-pane, about the size of a half-crown, showed where the electric fluid had entered. There was a charred streak showing the path of the lightning as it made its way to the sword, down which it passed to the sofa, carrying with it the fused silver, which it scientifically deposited on that magnetic animal, the cat.

Of course, the cat was instantly killed, and therefore remained in the position in which the lightning found her peacefully sleeping. It is thought the plating of the cat's surface will prevent decay, and that she may be retained permanently among the family curiosities. Local scientists, the Bostonians say, are quite puzzled by the occurrence, and the electroplated cat is being investigated by a member of the Albany Institute.--_Newtowne Calendar._

A SUPERSENSITIVE HEN.

"Yas," declared a new man on the country court jury, to his companions the other noon, "I maintain that hens has souls jest as does human bein's. Mebbe not all on 'em, but now an' then you strike a bird that has reasonin' faculties an' feelin' an' 'motions jest as you an' me. They has their joys and their sorrers. So, I says, they has souls. Now here's proof.

"I had a fine Plymouth Rock what was a master layer. When th' other hens was takin' a vacation she was 'tendin' ter business an' layin' aigs. Well, one day she come out a-cacklin' an' I went in ter git th' aig.

"It 'pears that while she was tellin' me about it, my boy, Willum, took th' aig an' put a hard-boiled one in its place. Did it fer a joke on me, ye know. I noticed the aig looked kinder queer an' cracked her open. Well, if ever ye see a hen look dumfounded! She thought she'd layed it.

"I thought nothin' 'bout it till I looked down, an' hanged if she wasn't cryin'. Big tears was rollin' down her furrered cheeks an' I tried ter tell her that she was all right, that 'twas some of Willum's horseplay, but she jest sighed kinder human like an' walked slowly off. Th' next day she didn't lay, but moped 'round the' yard sad an' homesick like. Well, it went on fer a week an' still nary an aig.

"Then I noticed she was quittin' th' feed I was givin' her, an' tryin' ter pick up a livin'. She had a conscience, ye see, an' wouldn't eat boughten food 'less she could repay me in the right kind of aigs.

"She knowed she wan't looked to ter lay hard-boiled aigs as she thought she'd done. 'Father,' says Willum one day, 'I guess we're goin' ter lose that hen. She's thinkin' up something desperate. I just caught her 'xamin' a scythe out back of th' barn.'

"Well, we tried our best ter cheer her up, but 'twan't no use. One day I found her in the tool-house, dead. She had dragged her neck across a scythe, cuttin' her throat.

"Over in one corner was a aig jest left ter show me that she intended ter do what's right. But if ever I see'd a clear case of suicide, her death was one. So, I says, some' hens has feelin's jest as does a human bein', an' therefore I 'low they has souls."--_Rochester Post-Express._

PEWTER'S INDUSTRIAL BUGS.

Silas Pewter, of Hendricks township, Chautauqua County, who discovered the adamant bug, is getting rich fast off his discovery. It was in August when he discovered the bugs, and several weeks had passed away before he could get things shaped up to "colonize" them properly.

He now has at least a dozen different "herds" of them. Some are removing the stone from fields for farmers by eating it into sand and letting it go back into the soil when the ground is plowed. Pewter gets two dollars an acre for this.

One herd is working on the road in Harrison township cutting the rock out of the hills. Several herds are at work in the sandpaper factory between Elgin and Hewins.

Mr. Pewter says his sandpaper mill has paid well, but thinks he will close it down during the spring months because so many road overseers want the bugs for spring road-work.

He says he is about to close a contract with the Santa Fé for the mastication of the big boulders along its tracks west of Elgin. This, he says, will give the bugs work all season.--_Kansas City Journal._

A HAIR-RAISING TALE.

"The 'beauty doctor' told a good story about her hair-restorer," said a well-known Akron business man Monday, "but I know a better one. With several other men I was associated, several years ago, in the manufacture of a restorer. We had a fakir selling the remedy, and this was one of his tales:

"'A woman came to me the other day for her eighth bottle. She said she liked the taste of it so well. I was frightened and took her into a private office and told her to show me her tongue. She stuck it out and there was a half-inch of hair on it. To keep from hurting the business we had to feed her camphor balls all that summer to keep the moth out of her stomach.'"--_Akron (Ohio) Times-Democrat._

The Stolen Letter.

BY WILKIE COLLINS.

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was the son of an English portrait painter. As a young man he engaged in commerce, but later studied law and was admitted to the bar. His own tastes, however, inclined him to literature; and even while in business life he wrote a historical romance, "Antonina."

Becoming acquainted with Dickens, he was encouraged by the latter to give up his profession and devote himself entirely to novel writing. Dickens at that time was editor of the magazine called _Household Words_; and in its pages there were published the short stories by Collins, afterward collected into a volume entitled "After Dark," from which the accompanying selection is taken.

In another magazine, also edited by Dickens--_All the Year Round_--Collins scored his first great success with the serial story "The Woman in White," which was read with the keenest interest by tens of thousands. In it Collins showed himself to be a great master of construction. The plot was so intricate as to hold the reader in suspense until the end; while the mystery and horror of certain parts of it were masterly in their execution. Collins, in fact, ranks in English with Gaboriau in French for the ingenuity with which he elaborates a plot; and this special gift is seen also in "Armadale," "The Moonstone," and "No Name."

For a long while his stories were almost as widely read as those of Dickens himself; and in 1873, like Dickens, he visited the United States, where he gave readings of his own short stories. The narrative printed here is an excellent example of the skill with which Collins piques and sustains one's interest even within the space of a few short pages.

I served my time--never mind in whose office--and I started in business for myself in one of our English country towns, I decline stating which. I hadn't a farthing of capital, and my friends in the neighborhood were poor and useless enough, with one exception. That exception was Mr. Frank Gatliffe, son of Mr. Gatliffe, member for the county, the richest man and the proudest for many a mile round about our parts.

Stop a bit, Mr. Artist, you needn't perk up and look knowing. You won't trace any particulars by the name of Gatliffe. I am not bound to commit myself or anybody else by mentioning names. I have given you the first that came into my head.

Well, Mr. Frank was a stanch friend of mine, and ready to recommend me whenever he got the chance. I had contrived to get him a little timely help--for a consideration, of course--in borrowing money at a fair rate of interest; in fact, I had saved him from the Jews.

The money was borrowed while Mr. Frank was at college. He came back from college, and stopped at home a little while, and then there got spread about all our neighborhood a report that he had fallen in love, as the saying is, with his young sister's governess, and that his mind was made up to marry her.

What! you're at it again, Mr. Artist! You want to know her name, don't you? What do you think of Smith?

Speaking as a lawyer, I consider report, in a general way, to be a fool and a liar. But in this case report turned out to be something very different. Mr. Frank told me he was really in love, and said upon his honor (an absurd expression which young chaps of his age are always using) he was determined to marry Smith, the governess--the sweet, darling girl, as _he_ called her; but I'm not sentimental, and _I_ call her Smith, the governess.

Well, Mr. Frank's father, being as proud as Lucifer, said "No," as to marrying the governess, when Mr. Frank wanted him to say "Yes." He was a man of business, was old Gatliffe, and he took the proper business course. He sent the governess away with a first-rate character and a spanking present, and then he looked about him to get something for Mr. Frank to do.

While he was looking about Mr. Frank bolted to London after the governess, who had nobody alive belonging to her to go to but an aunt--her father's sister. The aunt refuses to let Mr. Frank in without the squire's permission. Mr. Frank writes to his father, and says he will marry the girl as soon as he is of age, or shoot himself.

Up to town come the squire and his wife and his daughter, and a lot of sentimentality, not in the slightest degree material to the present statement, takes place among them; and the upshot of it is that old Gatliffe is forced into withdrawing the word No and substituting the word Yes.

I don't believe he would ever have done it, though, but for one lucky peculiarity in the case. The governess's father was a man of good family--pretty nigh as good as Gatliffe's own. He had been in the army; had sold out; set up as a wine merchant--failed--died; ditto his wife, as to the dying part of it. No relation, in fact, left for the squire to make inquiries about but the father's sister--who had behaved, as old Gatliffe said, like a thoroughbred gentlewoman in shutting the door against Mr. Frank in the first instance.

So, to cut the matter short, things were at last made up pleasant enough. The time was fixed for the wedding, and an announcement about it--Marriage in High Life and all that--put into the county paper. There was a regular biography, besides, of the governess's father, so as to stop people from talking--a great flourish about his pedigree, and a long account of his services in the army; but not a word, mind ye, of his having turned wine merchant afterward. Oh, no--not a word about that!

I knew it, though, for Mr. Frank told me. He hadn't a bit of pride about him. He introduced me to his future wife one day when I met him out walking, and asked me if I did not think he was a lucky fellow. I don't mind admitting that I did, and that I told him so.

Ah! but she was one of my sort, was that governess. Stood, to the best of my recollection, five feet four. Good lissom figure, that looked as if it had never been boxed up in a pair of stays. Eyes that made me feel as if I was under a pretty stiff cross-examination the moment she looked at me. Fine red, kiss-and-come-again sort of lips. Cheeks and complexion----

No, Mr. Artist, you wouldn't identify her by her cheeks and complexion, if I drew you a picture of them this very moment. She has had a family of children since the time I'm talking of; and her cheeks are a trifle fatter, and her complexion is a shade or two redder now than when I first met her out walking with Mr. Frank.

The marriage was to take place on a Wednesday. I decline mentioning the year or the month. I had started as an attorney on my own account--say six weeks, more or less, and was sitting alone in my office on the Monday morning before the wedding-day, trying to see my way clear before me and not succeeding particularly well, when Mr. Frank suddenly bursts in, as white as any ghost that ever was painted, and says he's got the most dreadful case for me to advise on, and not an hour to lose in acting on my advice.

"Is this in the way of business, Mr. Frank?" says I, stopping him just as he was beginning to get sentimental. "Yes or no, Mr. Frank?" rapping my new office paper-knife on the table, to pull him up short all the sooner.

"My dear fellow"--he was always familiar with me--"it's in the way of business, certainly; but friendship----"

I was obliged to pull him up short again, and regularly examine him as if he had been in the witness-box, or he would have kept me talking to no purpose half the day.

"Now, Mr. Frank," says I, "I can't have any sentimentality mixed up with business matters. You please to stop talking, and let me ask questions. Answer in the fewest words you can use. Nod when nodding will do instead of words."

I fixed him with my eye for about three seconds, as he sat groaning and wriggling in his chair. When I'd done fixing him I gave another rap with my paper-knife on the table to startle him up a bit. Then I went on.

"From what you have been stating up to the present time," says I, "I gather that you are in a scrape which is likely to interfere seriously with your marriage on Wednesday?"

He nodded, and I cut in again before he could say a word:

"The scrape affects your young lady, and goes back to the period of a transaction in which her late father was engaged, doesn't it?"

He nods, and I cut in once more:

"There is a party, who turned up after seeing the announcement of your marriage in the paper, who is cognizant of what he oughtn't to know, and who is prepared to use his knowledge of the same to the prejudice of the young lady and of your marriage, unless he receives a sum of money to quiet him? Very well. Now, first of all, Mr. Frank, state what you have been told by the young lady herself about the transaction of her late father. How did you first come to have any knowledge of it?"

"She was talking to me about her father one day so tenderly and prettily, that she quite excited my interest about him," begins Mr. Frank; "and I asked her, among other things, what had occasioned his death. She said she believed it was distress of mind in the first instance; and added that this distress was connected with a shocking secret, which she and her mother had kept from everybody, but which she could not keep from me, because she was determined to begin her married life by having no secrets from her husband."

Here Mr. Frank began to get sentimental again, and I pulled him up short once more with the paper-knife.

"She told me," Mr. Frank went on, "that the great mistake of her father's life was his selling out of the army and taking to the wine-trade. He had no talent for business; things went wrong with him from the first. His clerk, it was strongly suspected, cheated him----"

"Stop a bit," says I. "What was that suspected clerk's name?"

"Davager," says he.

"Davager," says I, making a note of it. "Go on, Mr. Frank."

"His affairs got more and more entangled," says Mr. Frank; "he was pressed for money in all directions; bankruptcy, and consequent dishonor (as he considered it), stared him in the face. His mind was so affected by his troubles that both his wife and daughter, toward the last, considered him to be hardly responsible for his own acts. In this state of desperation and misery, he----" Here Mr. Frank began to hesitate.

We have two ways in the law of drawing evidence off nice and clear from an unwilling client or witness. We give him a fright, or we treat him to a joke. I treated Mr. Frank to a joke.

"Ah!" says I, "I know what he did. He had a signature to write; and, by the most natural mistake in the world, he wrote another gentleman's name instead of his own--eh?"

"It was to a bill," says Mr. Frank, looking very crestfallen, instead of taking the joke. "His principal creditor wouldn't wait till he could raise the money, or the greater part of it. But he was resolved, if he sold off everything, to get the amount and repay----"

"Of course," says I; "drop that. The forgery was discovered. When?"

"Before even the first attempt was made to negotiate the bill. He had done the whole thing in the most absurdly and innocently wrong way. The person whose name he had used was a stanch friend of his and a relation of his wife's--a good man as well as a rich one. He had influence with the chief creditor, and he used it nobly. He had a real affection for the unfortunate man's wife, and he proved it generously."

"Come to the point," says I. "What did he do? In a business way, what did he do?"

"He put the false bill into the fire, drew a bill of his own to replace it, and then--only then--told my dear girl and her mother all that had happened. Can you imagine anything nobler?" asks Mr. Frank.

"Speaking in my professional capacity, I can't imagine anything greener," says I. "Where was the father? Off, I suppose?"

"Ill in bed," says Mr. Frank, coloring. "But he mustered strength enough to write a contrite and grateful letter the same day, promising to prove himself worthy of the noble moderation and forgiveness extended to him, by selling off everything he possessed to repay his money debt. He did sell off everything, down to some old family pictures that were heirlooms; down to the little plate he had; down to the very tables and chairs that furnished his drawing-room. Every farthing of the debt was paid; and he was left to begin the world again, with the kindest promises of help from the generous man who had forgiven him. It was too late. His crime of one rash moment--atoned for though it had been--preyed upon his mind. He became possessed with the idea that he had lowered himself forever in the estimation of his wife and daughter, and----"

"He died," I cut in. "Yes, yes, we know that. Let's go back for a minute to the contrite and grateful letter that he wrote. My experience in the law, Mr. Frank, has convinced me that if everybody burned everybody else's letters, half the courts of justice in this country might shut up shop. Do you happen to know whether the letter we are now speaking of contained anything like an avowal or confession of the forgery?"

"Of course it did," says he. "Could the writer express his contrition without making some such confession?"

"Quite easy, if he had been a lawyer," says I. "But never mind that; I'm going to make a guess--a desperate guess, mind. Should I be altogether in error if I thought that this letter had been stolen; and that the fingers of Mr. Davager, of suspicious commercial celebrity, might possibly be the fingers which took it?"

"That is exactly what I wanted to make you understand," cried Mr. Frank.

"How did he communicate the interesting fact of the theft to you?"

"He has not ventured into my presence. The scoundrel actually had the audacity----"

"Aha!" says I. "The young lady herself! Sharp practitioner, Mr. Davager."

"Early this morning, when she was walking alone in the shrubbery," Mr. Frank goes on, "he had the assurance to approach her, and to say that he had been watching his opportunity of getting a private interview for days past. He then showed her--actually showed her--her unfortunate father's letter; put into her hands another letter directed to me; bowed, and walked off, leaving her half dead with astonishment and terror. If I had only happened to be there at the time!" says Mr. Frank, shaking his fist murderously in the air, by way of a finish.

"It's the greatest luck in the world that you were not," says I. "Have you got that other letter?"

He handed it to me. It was so remarkably humorous and short, that I remember every word of it at this distance of time. It began in this way:

To FRANCIS GATLIFFE, ESQ., JUN.

SIR--I have an extremely curious autograph letter to sell. The price is a five-hundred-pound note. The young lady to whom you are to be married on Wednesday will inform you of the nature of the letter, and the genuineness of the autograph. If you refuse to deal, I shall send a copy to the local paper, and shall wait on your highly respected father with the original curiosity, on the afternoon of Tuesday next. Having come down here on family business, I have put up at the family hotel--being to be heard of at the Gatliffe Arms. Your very obedient servant,

ALFRED DAVAGER.

"A clever fellow that," says I, putting the letter into my private drawer.

"Clever!" cries Mr. Frank, "he ought to be horsewhipped within an inch of his life. I would have done it myself; but she made me promise, before she told me a word of the matter, to come straight to you."

"That was one of the wisest promises you ever made," says I. "We can't afford to bully this fellow, whatever else we may do with him. Do you think I am saying anything libelous against your excellent father's character when I assert that if he saw the letter he would certainly insist on your marriage being put off, at the very least?"

"Feeling as my father does about my marriage, he would insist on its being dropped altogether, if he saw this letter," says Mr. Frank with a groan. "But even that is not the worst of it. The generous, noble girl herself says that if the letter appears in the paper, with all the unanswerable comments this scoundrel would be sure to add to it, she would rather die than hold me to my engagement, even if my father would let me keep it."

As he said this his eyes began to water. He was a weak young fellow, and ridiculously fond of her. I brought him back to business with another rap of the paper-knife.

"Hold up, Mr. Frank," says I. "I have a question or two more. Did you think of asking the young lady whether, to the best of her knowledge, this infernal letter was the only written evidence of the forgery now in existence?"

"Yes, I did think directly of asking her that," says he; "and she told me she was quite certain that there was no written evidence of the forgery except that one letter."

"Will you give Mr. Davager his price for it?" says I.

"Yes," says Mr. Frank, quite peevish with me for asking him such a question. He was an easy young chap in money matters, and talked of hundreds as most men talk of sixpences.