life. Here it is," added the good man, opening a pocket-book. "The
hand-writing is drunken, but the sense is clear as Seltzer-water.
The scholars tell me _in vino veritas est_, but it appears to me that
truth really comes out in the repentance and headache that follow."

[Illustration: HOHENFELS' FAILURE.]

"MY DEAR AUNT" (ran the letter which Charles had seen forced from the
alligator after his unlucky game of dominoes): "You have known me as
the soul of candor. It is this happy quality which compels me to state
(for I am something of a Rousseau) that if I ever playfully accused
your pretty pet Francine of being a flirt, I knew nothing about it.
The best proof is that she absolutely refused to join her expectations
with mine, though I am something of an Adonis. If you believed that
she and the wine-peddler had made a match, I pity your credulity and
ignorance of human nature. I am certain that neither the peddler nor
myself would touch the enterprise until you had shown exactly what you
would (pecuniarily) do. For my part, I have acted throughout on the
most exact and advanced scientific principles. Intending to modify
the spirit-trade in America, and especially to introduce the exclusive
agency of the Farina essences, I found that the sinew particularly
needed for this leap was capital. Desiring to absorb your bounties
toward Francine, I at first proposed matrimony. This offer was made
without any enmity toward the girl, as my next move was without
affection, though it seems to be resulting to her benefit. I became
her accuser as coolly as I had been her lover. Passion has nothing
to do with the combinations of strategic genius: I am something of a
Washington. My theory of her clandestine marriage was one of the most
masterly fictions of the age--a plot worthy of Thackeray. If I could
have succeeded in mutilating the statue in the graveyard, I might have