ing on a soft mass; the timbers of the bed creaked; a deep impression marked itself distinctly on the pillow, and on the bed itself. The crowd who witnessed this gave a sort of low, universal cry and rushed from the room. Hammond and I were left alone

with our mystery.

We remained silent for some time, listening to the low, irregular breathing of the creature on the bed, and watching the rustle of the bedclothes as it impotently struggled to free itself from confinement. Then Ham

mond spoke :

Harry, this is awful."

"Ay, awful."

What do you

"But not unaccountable.' "Not unaccountable'! mean? Such a thing has never occurred since the birth of the world. I know not what to think, Hammond. God grant that I am not mad, and that this is not an insane fantasy!"

"Let us reason a little, Harry. Here is a solid body which we touch, but which we cannot see. The fact is so unusual that it strikes us with terror. Is there no parallel, though, for such a phenomenon? Take a piece of pure glass it is tangible and transparent. A certain chemical coarseness is all that prevents its being so entirely transparent as to be totally invisible. It is not theoretically impossible, mind you, to fabricate a glass which shall not reflect a single ray of light-a glass so pure and homogeneous in its atoms that the rays from the sun shall pass through it as they do through the air, refracted but not reflected. We do not see the air, and yet we feel it."

"That's all very well, Hammond, but these are inanimate substances. Glass does

not breathe, air does not breathe. This thing has a heart that palpitates, a will that moves it, lungs that play and inspire and respire."

"You forget the strange phenomena of which we have so often heard of late," answered the doctor, gravely. "At the meetings called 'spirit circles' invisible hands have been thrust into the hands of those persons round the table-warm, fleshy hands that seemed to pulsate with mortal life."

What? Do you think, then, that this thing is "

"I don't know what it is," was the solemn reply; "but, please the gods, I will with your assistance thoroughly investigate it.'

We watched together, smoking many pipes, all night long by the bedside of the unearthly being that tossed and panted until it was apparently wearied out. Then we learned by the low, regular breathing that it slept.

The next morning the house was all astir. The boarders congregated on the landing outside my room, and Hammond and myself were lions. We had to answer a thousand questions as to the state of our extraordinary prisoner, for as yet not one person in the house except ourselves could be induced to set foot in the apartment.

The creature was awake. This was evidenced by the convulsive manner in which the bedclothes were moved in its efforts to escape. There was something truly terrible in beholding, as it were, those second-hand indications of the terrible writhings and agonized struggles for liberty which themselves were invisible.

Hammond and myself had racked our brains during the long night to discover

some means by which we might realize the shape and general appearance of the Enigma. As well as we could make out by passing our hands over the creature's form, its outlines and lineaments were human. There was a mouth, a round, smooth head without hair, a nose which, however, was little elevated above the cheeks-and its hands and feet felt like those of a boy. At first we thought of placing the being on a smooth surface and tracing its outline with chalk, as shoemakers trace the outline of the foot. This plan was given up as being of no value. Such an outline would give not the slighest idea of its conformation.

A happy thought struck me: we would take a cast of it in plaster of Paris. This would give us the solid figure and satisfy all our wishes. But how to do it? The movements of the creature would disturb the setting of the plastic covering and distort the mould. Another thought: Why not give it chloroform? It had respiratory organs; that was evident by its breathing. Once reduced to a state of insensibility, we could do with it what we would. Doctor X— was sent for, and after the worthy physician had recovered from the first shock of amazement he proceeded to administer the chloroform. In three minutes afterward we were enabled to remove the fetters from the creature's body, and a well-known modeler of this city was busily engaged in covering the invisible form with the moist clay. In five minutes more we had a mould, and before evening a rough fac-simile of the Mystery. It was shaped like a man-distorted, uncouth and horrible, but still a man. It was small, not over four feet and some inches in height, and its limbs betrayed a muscular development

that was unparalleled. Its face surpassed in hideousness anything I had ever seen. Gustave Doré or Callot or Tony Johannot never conceived anything so horrible. There is a face in one of the latter's illustrations to Un voyage ou il vous plaira which somewhat approaches the countenance of this creature, but does not equal it. It was the physiognomy of what I should have fancied a ghoul to be. It looked as if it were capable of feeding on human flesh.

Having satisfied our curiosity and bound every one in the house over to secrecy, it became a question what was to be done with our Enigma. It was impossible that we should keep such a horror in our house; it was equally impossible that such an awful being should be let loose upon the world. I confess that I would have gladly voted for the creature's destruction, but who would shoulder the responsibility? Who would undertake the execution of this horrible semblance of a human being? Day after day this question was deliberated gravely. The boarders all left the house. Mrs. Moffat was in

despair, and threatened Hammond and myself with all sorts of legal penalties if we did not remove the Horror. Our answer was, "We will go if you like, but we decline taking this creature with us. Remove it yourself if you please. It appeared in your house; on you the responsibility rests." To this there was, of course, no answer. Mrs. Moffat could not obtain for love or money a person who would even approach the Mystery.

The most singular part of the transaction. was that we were entirely ignorant of what the creature habitually fed on. Everything in the way of nutriment that we could think

Ten, twelve days, a fortnight, passed, and it still lived. The pulsations of the heart, however, were daily growing fainter, and had now nearly ceased altogether. It was evident that the creature was dying for want of sustenance. While this terrible life-struggle was going on I felt miserable. I could not sleep of nights. Horrible as the creature was, it was pitiful to think of the pangs it was suffering. At last it died. Hammond and I found it cold and stiff one morning in the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to inspire. We hastened to bury it in the garden. It was a strange funeral, the dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp hole. The cast of its form I gave to Doctor X-, who keeps it in his museum in Tenth Street.

As I am on the eve of a long journey, from which I may not return, I have drawn up this narrative of an event the most singular that has ever come to my knowledge.

THE

HARRY ESCOTT. (Harper's Magazine.)

THE EGOTISTICAL TALKER. HE egotist is an Alexander Selkirk without the solitude. The etymology of an egotist may be rendered thus: "One of those gluttonous parts of speech that gulp down every substantive in the social grammar into its personal pronoun, condensing all the tenses, moods and voices of other people's verbs into a first person singular of its own. Example I myself saw it with my own. eyes, and nobody else but me, I say.'”

He whose staple conversation is his own panegyric forgets that everybody isn't as interested as himself in his alleged achieve

He has made a gross blunder somewhere (perhaps is always at it) who provokes such a "quotation." This vanity is sometimes, as with Cicero, associated with a genius too conscious of its own gifts to be sufficiently sensible of others. His inventions won't always bear testing. His great acquaintances, whose cards cover his table thick as medals on the breast of Wellington, commemorative of so many social conquests, are not all genuine deposits of their owners. Eggs are not always laid in the nest where they are hatched.

"I was to dine with the admiral," said such a one to a brother-officer as they met in the street, "but I've so many cards for to-night I can't go."

"I received the same invitation," said his friend, "and I'll apologize for you.

"Don't trouble yourself; pray don't!" "I must, if you don't come; for the admiral's invitation, you know, is like royalty's a command."

THE MARINER'S DREAM.

N slumbers of midnight the sailor-boy lay: His hammock swung loose at the sport

of the wind;

And the lips of the boy in a love-kiss unite With the lips of the maid whom his bosom holds dear.

And the swallow sings sweet from her nest in the wall;

All trembling with transport, he raises the latch,

And the voices of loved ones reply to his call.

a wreck:

The masts fly in splinters; the shrouds are on fire.

Like mountains the billows tremendously

swell;

In vain the lost wretch calls on Mercy to

save:

His cheek is impearled with a mother's

warm tear;

knell,

And the Death-angel flaps his broad wing

o'er the wave.

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