Eve knew from the beginning who "James Holden" was, and that she played
her cards accordingly. In view of this I fling all caution to the wind,
and in spite of the cold fear that is upon me of being sued for libel, I
tell these ladies--_people_, I mean--that they lie in their teeth.




TARGETS

"On the contrary," said Gardiner, "lightning very often strikes twice in
the same place, and often three times. The so-called all-wise Providence
is still in the experimental stage. My grandmother, for instance,
presented my grandfather with fifteen children: seven live sons and
eight dead daughters. That's when the lightning had fun with itself. And
when the epidemic of ophthalmia broke out in the Straits Settlements,
what class of people do you suppose developed the highest percentage of
total loss of sight in one or both eyes?--why the inmates of the big
asylum for the deaf and dumb in Singapore: twenty per cent of those poor
stricken souls went stone blind. Then what do you think the lightning
did? Set the blooming asylum on fire and burned it to the ground. And
then, I dare say, the elements retired to some region of waste, off in
space somewhere, and sat down and thundered with laughter. But it wasn't
through with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It
was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible
instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to
a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put
aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the _Nerissa_. She was
wrecked--"