DEAR SNEED (it ran),
You will see by the papers that I am off on a cruise, but they are as wrong as they usually are when they speak of me. I learn there was a bit of a flutter in the market while we were away yesterday, and I am glad to say that my brokers, who are sharp men, did me a good turn or two. I often wonder why these flurries come, but I suppose it is to let a man pick up some sound stocks at a reasonable rate, if he has the money by him. Perhaps they are also sent to teach humility to those who might else become purse-proud. We are but finite creatures, Sneed, here to-day and gone to-morrow. How foolish a thing is pride! And that reminds me that if your two daughters should happen to think as I do on the uncertainty of riches, I wish you would ask them to call. I have done up those securities in a sealed package and given the parcel to my daughter-in-law. She has no idea what the value of it is, but thinks it a little present from me to your girls. If, then, they should happen to call, she will hand it to them; if not, I shall use the contents to found a college for the purpose of teaching manners to young women whose grandfather used to feed pigs for a living, as indeed my own grandfather did. Should the ladies happen to like each other, I think I can put you on to a deal next week that will make up for Friday. I like you, Sneed, but you have no head for business. Seek my advice oftener.
Ever yours,
DRUCE.
The Sneed girls called on Mrs. Edward Druce.
TRANSFORMATION.
If you grind castor sugar with an equal quantity of chlorate of potash, the result is an innocent-looking white compound, sweet to the taste, and sometimes beneficial in the case of a sore throat. But if you dip a glass rod into a small quantity of sulphuric acid, and merely touch the harmless-appearing mixture with the wet end of the rod, the dish which contains it becomes instantly a roaring furnace of fire, vomiting forth a fountain of burning balls, and filling the room with a dense, black, suffocating cloud of smoke.
So strange a combination is that mystery which we term Human Nature, that a touch of adverse circumstance may transform a quiet, peaceable, law-abiding citizen into a malefactor whose heart is filled with a desire for vengeance, stopping at nothing to accomplish it.
In a little narrow street off the broad Rue de Rennes, near the great terminus of Mont-Parnasse, stood the clock-making shop of the brothers Delore. The window was filled with cheap clocks, and depending from a steel spring attached to the top of the door was a bell, which rang when any one entered, for the brothers were working clockmakers, continually busy in the room at the back of the shop, and trade in the neighbourhood was not brisk enough to allow them to keep an assistant. The brothers had worked amicably in this small room for twenty years, and were reported by the denizens of that quarter of Paris to be enormously rich. They were certainly contented enough, and had plenty of money for their frugal wants, as well as for their occasional exceedingly mild dissipations at the neighbouring café. They had always a little money for the church, and a little money for charity, and no one had ever heard either of them speak a harsh word to any living soul, and least of all to each other. When the sensitively adjusted bell at the door announced the arrival of a possible customer, Adolph left his work and attended to the shop, while Alphonse continued his task without interruption. The former was supposed to be the better business man of the two, while the latter was admittedly the better workman. They had a room over the shop, and a small kitchen over the workroom at the back; but only one occupied the bedroom above, the other sleeping in the shop, as it was supposed that the wares there displayed must have formed an almost irresistible temptation to any thief desirous of accumulating a quantity of time-pieces. The brothers took week-about at guarding the treasures below, but in all the twenty years no thief had yet disturbed their slumbers.
One evening, just as they were about to close the shop and adjourn together to the café, the bell rang, and Adolph went forward to learn what was wanted. He found waiting for him an unkempt individual of appearance so disreputable, that he at once made up his mind that here at last was the thief for whom they had waited so long in vain. The man's wild, roving eye, that seemed to search out every corner and cranny in the place and rest nowhere for longer than a second at a time, added to Delore's suspicions. The unsavoury visitor was evidently spying out the land, and Adolph felt certain he would do no business with him at that particular hour, whatever might happen later.
The customer took from under his coat, after a furtive glance at the door of the back room, a small paper-covered parcel, and, untying the string somewhat hurriedly, displayed a crude piece of clockwork made of brass. Handing it to Adolph, he said, "How much would it cost to make a dozen like that?"