Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870

CHAPTER VII.
MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE.
You and your sister have been insured, of course, said the Gospeler to MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON, as they returned from escorting Mr. SCHENCK.
Of course, echoed MONTGOMERY, with a suppressed moan. He is our guardian, and has trampled us into a couple of policies. We had to yield, or excess of Boreal conversation would have made us maniacs.
You speak bitterly for one so young, observed the Reverend OCTAVIUS SIMPSON. Is it derangement of the stomach, or have you known sorrow?
Heaps of sorrow, answered the young man. You may be aware, sir, that my sister and I belong to a fine old heavily mortgaged Southern family—the PENRUTHERSES and MUNCHAUSENS of Chipmunk Court House, Virginia, are our relatives—and that SHERMAN marched through us during the late southward projection of certain of your Northern military scorpions. After our father's felo-desease, ensuing remotely from an overstrain in attempting to lift a large mortgage, our mother gave us a step-father of Northern birth, who tried to amend our constitutions and reconstruct us.
Dreadful! murmured the Gospeler.
We hated him! MAGNOLIA threw her scissors at him several times. My sister, sir, does not know what fear is. She would fight a lion; inheriting the spirit from our father, who, I have heard said, frequently fought a tiger. She can fire a gun and pick off a State Senator as well as any man in all the South. Our mother died. A few mornings thereafter our step-father was found dead in his bed, and the doctors said he died of a pair of scissors which he must have swallowed accidentally in his youth, and which were found, after his death, to have worked themselves several inches out of his side, near the heart.
Swallowed a pair of scissors! exclaimed the Reverend OCTAVIUS.
He might have had a stitch in his side at the time, you know, and wanted to cut it, explained MONTGOMERY. At any rate, after that we became wards of Mr. SCHENCK, up North here. And now let me ask you, sir, is this Mr. EDWIN DROOD a student with you?