be the stage young man who is coming home to see his girl.

He is forever being reported as dead, but it always turns out to be
another fellow who was like him or who had on his (the young man's)
hat. He is bound to be out of it, whoever else may be in.

"If I had been at my post that day," he explains to his sobbing
mother, "I should have been blown up, but the Providence that watches
over good men had ordained that I should be laying blind drunk in
Blogg's saloon at the time the explosion took place, and so the other
engineer, who had been doing my work when it was his turn to be off,
was killed along with the whole of the crew."

"Ah, thank Heaven, thank Heaven for that!" ejaculates the pious old
lady, and the comic man is so overcome with devout joy that he has to
relieve his overstrained heart by drawing his young woman on one side
and grossly insulting her.

All attempts to kill this young man ought really to be given up now.
The job has been tried over and over again by villains and bad people
of all kinds, but no one has ever succeeded. There has been an amount
of energy and ingenuity expended in seeking to lay up that one man
which, properly utilized, might have finished off ten million ordinary
mortals. It is sad to think of so much wasted effort.

He, the young man coming home to see his girl, need never take an
insurance ticket or even buy a _Tit Bits_. It would be needless
expenditure in his case.

On the other hand, and to make matters equal, as it were, there are