buried that astonished fire-eater under a mountain of what were well called "polished insults." But though endowed like Disraeli with tremendous powers of invective, as of Disraeli, too, it was felt that Choate really hated no man.

Hate was about the only word in the dictionary which he did not personally and perfectly understand. He either loved or admired men, or they were as shadows to him. And his love, once started, was as uncheckable in its flow as his eloquence. That embarrassment came upon him at certain periods from endorsing the notes of the profligate Webster had no effect upon his friendship; he went on endorsing not only the notes of that most noted of moral and political failures, but also the policy of the man to whom, with the same perverse modesty which characterized Shelley's belief in the intellectual superiority of Byron, Choate appears to have habitually looked up and rendered homage.

It would be easy to multiply anecdotes of Choate; indeed, writing of him is like listening to him, one never feels like coming to an end. It was such a great life, so devoted to lofty public ends, so strewn along its wayside with private generosities, that it seems pitiful that to posterity the man whose eloquence charmed thousands, the man in whose honor, at death, Faneuil Hall was draped in mourning, must be little more than a name, a splendid tradition, not an infinite companion like Homer, or Cicero, or Shakespeare. "There is nothing like the immortality of a book," said Choate, with a sigh. Yet it is something most of us could be easily content with, to know that one had held during life thousands in the hollow of the hand, and to fancy that, after death, in the place of the people, Faneuil Hall, day might be turned into night to emphasize the solemnity of a people's grief, while the most polished orator of the age pronounced a fraternal benediction, amid a tense attention unbroken by the usual applause. Indeed, Edward Everett never surpassed his tribute to his dead friend on that 23d of July, 1857, when he said, in reference to Choate's style: "It is as often marked by a pregnant brevity as by a sonorous amplitude. He is sometimes satisfied, in concise epigrammatical clauses, to skirmish with his light troops and drive in the enemy's outposts. It is only on fitting occasions, when great principles are to be vindicated and solemn truths told, when some moral or political Waterloo or Solferino is to be fought, that he puts on the entire panoply

of his gorgeous rhetoric. It is then that his majestic sentences swell to the dimensions of his thought; that you hear afar off the awful roar of his rifled ordnance; and when he has stormed the heights and broken the centre and trampled the squares, and turned back the staggering wings of the adversary, that he sounds his imperial clarion [here the audience broke into applause, the speaker was so like Choate along the whole line of battle and moves forward with all his hosts in one overwhelming charge."

THE SHADOW OF THE NOOSE.

A NOVELETTE.

BY FERDINAND C. VALENTINE.

BUT three weeks to live.

Three weeks; twenty-one days, five hundred and four hours, thirty thousand two hundred and forty minutes, 1,814,400 seconds; numerically expressed they look large, but how these seconds whisk by into the æons of the past! One is gone, and another-I dare not think of it. And yet: what other thought can I have?

Would but madness come to my relief, that I need not think. I used to pity the insane; I had compassion for limited intellects; I sorrowed for the unfortunate - how I envy them now. They can live. The very animals, the reptiles, even those of most repugnant shape can eat, and drink, and bask in the sunlight, heedless of the day of death; but I-I know that I shall die and when I shall die; it is too horrible to contemplate.

How escape from these thoughts? They drive me mad with anguish, but unfortunately do not deprive me of reason. Of yore when in trouble, I fled to the pen for relief. My imagination conjured up factitious existences who rose and walked and did my bidding. In their woes and pleasures I forgot my sufferings and enjoyed the anticipations of popular plaudits. Or again, my writings opened channels for scientific discussions, through which the interests of humankind were advanced; perhaps this record may do some good, at all events this writing, nervous and disjointed as it must be, gives me an occupation. For the nonce, I do not feel the seconds glide by.

Was it Joshua who bade the sun stand still? Would that I could arrest the flight of time; would that I could catch and hold in my hand each precious second as it whisks by, "ere one can say it lightens."

What a horrible spectre is death. In three short weeks I

shall feel it-the gallows wait me; human justice-inhuman in-justice-will be satisfied, though not sated.

"To be hanged by the neck until you are dead,” “until you are dead." The very walls of my cell repeat the words; my heart's each beat echoes them; my soul throbs with them; my brain reverberates, "until you are dead-dead- dead."

Once, long ago, prompted by idle curiosity, or some other motive beyond my ken, I sought permission to attend an execution. I was then sufficiently influential to have my request immediately granted. The sheriff sent me a heavily black-bordered sheet of stiff paper, announcing that I was appointed a special deputy for the hanging of a poor, ignorant Italian laborer.

Others dressed like me in black, marched behind the wretched creature who was dragged through the jail-yard. He screamed: "Sono democrata Sono democrata!" in the desperate hope that perhaps his announcing himself a Socialist might provoke a rescue. I turned my head as he was carried up the stairs of the horrible engine of death.

"Sono democrata!" he screamed again and again. "Sono demo!"

A heavy blow and then I knew all was over. A young man rushed by me, note-book in hand. To the wall he sped, tying his book to a string that had hung there unperceived; gave the cord a sharp twitch and someone on the outside rapidly pulled the book over the wall.

When I reached City Hall an hour later, that young man's paper had issued an extra, giving the details of the hanging, even the poor wretch's last utterance: "Sono demo

Someone near me said: "Another democrat gone," and those about us laughed.

Three weeks from to-day I too will see the sunlight. Black-bordered papers will be issued to others who will be deputy sheriffs to witness my death. Reporters will vie with each other to tell how I looked, what I said, what I did. I could be indifferent to all that, were I not to die.

Think of it; in three short weeks my hand will feel no more; my brain will think no more. I will have passed out of existence, while I should live at least twenty years more. Twenty years and now each second is a treasure, a gem, a priceless gem even in this cell.

Oh, could I but escape the fatal noose, how happy would

I be; how happy would I make others. But I cannot, and as I cannot, would that I could escape at least from the power and torture of thought. Would that I could go to my death as the brute goes to slaughter - stupidly ignorant, blissfully unconscious; the butcher strikes the blow, and all is over.

I would dash out my brains against the cold walls of this cell, but no, that would rob me of many precious, lovely moments of life; that life that thrills and rushes through me, though I am so near its end. Again, if I tried it, those men outside, the "death watch," would prevent me; they are put there to ensure that society be avenged.

Ah, look at them; seated in a circle watching my every motion. They are smoking and conversing in subdued tones. They all belong to the lower walks of life. Were I in their place, I would save the poor sufferer or die in the attempt. Can they not understand that justice errs when it is not tempered with mercy?

This is the acme of cruelty; he died without suffering. Five shots, and it was all over. My aim was good. I was even kind in my killing; I gave him none of that soul-wracking torture which society is now giving me.

"Vengeance is mine,' sayth the Lord." Does society, does the law arrogate to itself divine rights? Like all pusillanimous, little things, arrogating superior rights, it becomes nauseatingly persecuting. If sanguinous society wants my blood, why does it not shoot me suddenly, as I did him? This slow torture is frightful.

Would I kill myself? No; I am afraid to die. You say this is because I have no religion; religious people die calmly. That is a lie a lie-a lie! Nobody dies calmly. If a moribund person is conscious, he approaches annihilation with fear and quaking. He knows that for him the sun will not rise again.

Why did they not condemn me to expiate my crime by a lifetime of hard labor? It would have been sweet and pleasant and at the same time would serve as a really salutary example. But no, that bestial body called "Society" is brutal enough to want the blood of the guilty to wash out the blood-stains of the innocent. The innocent did I say? Was Marcy innocent? He was a cur, and for killing a cur, I must die. He died suddenly, without suffering an instant,