public,--and such a public! (applause ). Ladies and gentlemen,--his
feelings are too much for him, and, withdrawing to the basket, he
hides his own personality in the following no doubt brilliant
effusions taken at random from this intellectual vortex. Ladies and
gentlemen,--I beg your attention to the story of:--

'THE UNSEEN VISITOR

"'While I was still a school-girl, I paid a visit to a young lady
friend in the pleasant city of C------. We occupied a room together in
the second story, and were the only persons on that floor, as the
other members of the family slept down-stairs, the house being large,
with irregular one-story wings on each side in the old-fashioned
style. C------ is a city of a hundred-thousand inhabitants, the
streets closely built up, lighted, paved, and guarded by a
well-regulated police force. It is a new town also, with no old
associations, old legends, or old people to cast a veil of mystery
over its new houses and young history; thus, it, would seem to be the
last place for anything mysterious, and yet it was there that a
singular incident occurred which I have never been able to explain.
One night I had been asleep perhaps two hours, when suddenly I
awoke,--it was about half-past ten when Kate and I went to our
room,--and soon after I awoke, I heard the clock strike one. The
street lamps were not lighted, in accordance with the almanac which
predicted a fine moon without any regard for the possibility, now a
certainty, of heavy clouds; not a gleam, therefore, came in through
the blinds to lighten the dark, still house. Our room was large,
opening into the hall which was long and broad, extending from one end
of the house to the other; the stairs from below came up into this
hall, and there was no way of getting to the back part of the house,