" The
visitor thereupon turned and went away, and fell twice in going
downstairs. From that hour he was never heard of. Whether he was a
ghost, or a spectral illusion of conscience, or a drunken man, who had
no business there, or the drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with
a transitory gleam of memory; whether he got safe home, or had no home
to get to; whether he died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever
afterwards; he never was heard of more.
A NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH
[Sidenote: _Mark Twain_]
Distressing Accident.--Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr. William
Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was leaving his
residence to go down town, as has been his usual custom for many years,
with the exception only of a short interval in the spring of 1850,
during which he was confined to his bed by injuries received in
attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly placing himself
directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and shouting, which if he
had done so even a single moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened
the animal still more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous
enough to himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and
distressing by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who was
there and saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding it is at least likely,
though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitring in another
direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the look out,
as a general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to
have stated, who is no more, being a Christian woman and without guile,
as it were, or property, in consequence of the fire of 1849, which
destroyed every single thing she had in the world.
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