silence, vast, immense, infuse into your soul some sound other than the
heavy throbbing of this fast disintegrating heart! Oh, pitiless stone
arches, let fall your crushing weight upon this Stygian monster!

I pray to time, to eternity, to the frozen æons of the past. Useless. I
am seized, forced to open my cold lips; there is agony,--supreme, mortal
agony of nerve tension, and wrenching of vitality. I struggle, scream,
and clutching the monster with superhuman strength, fling him aside, and
rise, bleeding, screaming--but triumphant, and keenly mortal in every
vein, alive and throbbing with consciousness and pain.

* * * * *

No, it was not opium, nor night-mare, but chloroform, a dentist, three
obstinate molars, a pair of forceps, and a lively set of nerves.




TITEE.


It was cold that day; the great sharp north wind swept out Elysian
Fields Street in blasts that made men shiver, and bent everything in its
track. The skies hung lowering and gloomy; the usually quiet street was
more than deserted, it was dismal.

Titee leaned against one of the brown freight cars for protection
against the shrill norther, and warmed his little chapped hands at a
blaze of chips and dry grass. "May be it'll snow," he muttered, casting