captured with all his men. The majority of them were shut up in narrow iron cages and publicly exhibited at Knoxville, to intimid-jto Union men, after which fifseen of them were hung ; the remaining eight were spared, * and had the good fortune to survive and relate their strange adventures. —' History of the Civil War in America.'

The Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut.

I was feeling blithe, almost jocund. I put a match to my cigar, and just then the morning's mail was handed in. The first superscription I glanced at was in a handwriting that sent a thrill of pleasure through and through ms. It was Aunt Mary's; and she was the person I loved and honored most in the whole world, outside of my own household. To show how strong her influence over me was, I will observe that long after everybody else's ' DO-stop;smoking' had ceased to effect me in the slightest degree, Aunt Mary could still stir up my torpid conscience into faint signs of life when she touched upon the matter. But all things have their limit in this world. A happy day came at last when even Aunt Mary's words could no longer: move me.

She pleaded with me just as earn estly as ever, after that blessed day, to quit my pernicious habit, but to no pur pose whatever; the moment she opened the subject I at once became calmly, peacefully, contentedly indifferent—abso lutely, adamantinely indifferent. Well, tho sight of hor handwriting reminded me that I was getting very hungry to see her again. I easily guessed what I should find in her letter. I opened it, Good ! Just as I expected; she was coming.

I said to myself, ' I am thoroughly happy and content now. If. my most pitiless enemy could appoar before me at this moment, I would freely right any wrong I may have done him.' Straightway the door opened; and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered. Ho was not more than two feet high. He seemed to bo about forty years old. Evory feature and evory inch of him was a trifle out of shape ; and so, while one could not put his finger upon any particular part and say, ' This is a conspicuous deformity,' the spectator perceived that this little person was a deformity as a whole—a vague, general, evenly-blended, nicely-ad justed deformity. There was a fox-liko cunning in the face and the sharp little eyes, and also alterness and malice. And yet, this vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of a remote and ill-defined resemblance to me ! He was a far-fetched, dim suggestion of a burlesque upon me, a caricature of me in little,

He stepped along with a chipper air, and flung himself into a doll's chair in a very free and easy way, without waiting to be asked.. He tossed his hat into tha waste basket. He picked up my old chalk pipe from the floor, £jave the stem a wipe or two on his kneo, filled the bowl from the tobacco-box at his side, and said to me, in a tone of pert command:

'Gimme a match.'

I blushed to the roots of my hair. I wanted to kick the pigmy into the fire, but some incomprehensible sens© of being legally and legitimately, under his authority forced me to obey his order. He applied the match to the pipe, took a contemplative whiff or two, and remarked in an irritatingly familiar way : • Seems to me its devilish odd weathor for this time of year.' I spoke up sharply and said to him : 'Look here, you miserable ash-cat, you will have to givo a little more attention to your manners, or I will throw you out of the window.' Tho manikin smiled a smile of malici ous contempt and security, puffed a whiff of smoke contemptuously toward me, and said, with a still more deliberate drawl : 1 Come —go eently, now, don't put on too many airs with your betters.' This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to subjugate me, too, for a moment. The pigmy then said, in a peculiarly sneering way, 'You turned a tramp away from your door this morning,' [' I said crustily: 'Perhaps I did, perhaps I dida't. How do you know ?' • Well I know. It isn't any matter how I know.' •Very Woll. Suppose 1 did turn a tramp away .''from the door—what of that?'

' Oh, nothing ; Only you lied to him.' «I didn't. That is '

..' Yes, but you did ; you lied to him.' I felt a guilty pang, but still I resolved to make a show of feeling slandered, so I said : ' This is baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp ■' 'There —wait. You were about to lie again. I know what you said to him. You said the cook had gone downtown, and there was nothing left from breakfast. Two lies. You knew tho cook was behind the door, and provisions behind hee.'

This astonishing accuracy silenced me ; and it filled me with wondering specu lations, too, as to how this cub could have got his information. Of course he could have culled the ■ conversation from the tramp, but by what sort of magic had he contrived to find out about the concealed cook ? ' Now the dwarf spoke again [:

vlt was rather pitiful, rather small in you ( tp refuse ;to read that poor young woman's manucript the other day, and give her an opinion as to its literary value; and she had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now wasn't it ?' T felt like a cur! 1 flushed and said :

' Look here, have you nothing better to jlo than prowl arouud prying into people s business ? i Did that girl tell you that P f ' Never mind whether she did or not. The main thing is, you did that contemp tible thing. And you felt ashamed of it ■Aha I ;and you feel ashamed of it now j This with a sort of devilish glee. With fiery earnestness I responded ; ' I told that girl in the kindest, gentlest way that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an •inaividual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merii and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal compe to sit in judgment upon a litera ry effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal at the outset. ' Yes, you said all that. So you did, you juggling, small-souled shuffler 1 And yet when the happy hopefulness faded out of that poor girl's face, when you saw her •furtively slip beneathed her shawl the : scroll she had so patiently and honestly scribbled at—so ashamed of her darling now, so proud of it before—when you saw the gladness go out of her eyes and the tears como there, when she crept away so humbly who had come so—'

' Oh. peace ! peace I peace ! Blister your merciless tongUe ; haven't all these thoughts tortured mo enough without your coming hero to fetch them back again ?'

Bemorse ! Eemorse ! It seemed that it would eat tho very heart out of mo ! And yet that small fiend only sat there leering at me with joy and contempt, ahd placidly chuckling. Presently he began to speak again. Every sentence was an accusation, and every accusation tho truth. Every clause was freighted with sarcasm and derision, every slow-dropping word burned like vitriol. Tho dwarf reminded mo of times when I had flown at my children in anger and punished them for faults which a little inquiry would have taught mo that others, and not they, had committed. He reminded mo of how I had disloyally allowed old friends to bo traduced in my hearing, and been too craven to utter a word in thoir defense. He reminded mo of many dishonest things which I had done; of many which I had procured to bo done by children and other irresponsible persons ; of some which I nad planned, thought upon, and longed to do, and been kept from the performance by fear of consequences only. 'For instance,' said he, 'just tako tho case of your younger brother, when you two were little boys together, many a long year ago. He always lovingly trusted in you with a fidelity that your manifold treacheries wore not able to shake. He followed you about like a dog, content to suffer wrong and abuse if he might only be with you ; patient under these injuries so long as it was your hand that inflicted them. The latest picture you you have of him in health and strength must be a comfort to you ! You pledged your honor that if ho would let you blind fold him no harm should como to him; then giggling and choking over tho rare fun of a joke, you led him to a brook thinly glazeded with ice and pushed him in; and how you did laugh ! Man, you would norer forget the gentle reproachful look he gave you as he struggled shivering out, if you live a thousand years! Oho! you see it now, you see it now !'

' Beast, I havo seen it millions of times, and shall sco it a million times more ! and may you rot away piecemeal and suffer till doomsday what I suffer now, for bringing it back to mo again !' The dwarf chuckled contentedly, and went on :

' Two months ago, on a Tuesday, you woke up, away in the night, and fell to thinking, with shame, about a peculiarly mean and pitiful act of yours toward a poor, ignornat Indian in the wilds of the Bocky Mountains and '•——

'Stop a moment, devil! Stop! Do you mean to tell mo that even my very thoughts are not hidden from you P'

*It seems to look like that. Didn't you think the thoughts I have just mentioned !'

' If I didn't, I wish I may never breathe again! Look here,friend —Who are you?' 'Well, who do you think?' ' I thing you are Satan himself. I think you are the devil.'

' No.' ' Would you like to know P' ' Indeed I would.' ' Well, I am your Conscience !'

I sprang at the creature roaring : * Curse you, I have wished a hundred million times that you were tangible, and that I could get my hands on your throat once ! Oh, but I will wreak a deadly vengeance on ' — >

Folly ! Ligbtining does not move more quickly than my Conscience did ! He darted aloft so suddenly that in the moment my fingers clutched the empty air he was already perched on tho top of the high book-case. In a blind rage I flew from place to place. While I puffed and gasped with fatigue and excitement, my Conscience talked to this effect:'

• /My good slave you are curiously witless —no, I mean characteristically so. Fool, you are so cheerfully anxious to kill me that conscience is as light as a feather; hence I am away up here out of your reach. I can almost respect a mere ordinary sort of fool; tut you—pah !' i I would have given anything, then, so that I could get this person down from there and take his lifo, but I couldn't. So I could only look longingly up at my master, and rave at the ill luck that denied

me a heavy conscience tho one only time that I had ever wanted such a thing in my life. Just then ono of my boys entered and exclaimed : ' My ! what has beon going on here ! The book-case is all one riddlo of —

'I sprang up in consternation, and shouted: 'Out of this! Hurry, Jump! Shut the door ! Quick, or my Conscience will get away !' The door slammed to, and I locked it. I was grateful to the bottom of my heart, to see that my owner was still my prisoner. I said: ' Hang you. I might have lost you. Look here, friend, the boy did not seem to notice you at all; how is that ?' ' For a very good reason. I am invisible to all but you '

I made mental note of that piece of information with a good deal of satisfaction. I could kill this miscreant now, if I got a chance, and no one would know it. But this very reflection mode me so light hearted that my Conscience could hardly keep his seat. I said, presently : ' Come, my Conscience, let us be friend ly. Let us fly a flag of truce for awhile. I am suffering to ask you some questions.' ' Very well. Begin/ ' Well, then iv the first place, why were you never visible to me before ?' ' Because you never asked to see me before, in tho right spirit and the proper form. You were just in the right spirit this time, and when you called for" your most pitiless enemy, I was that person, though you did not suspect it.'

* Well, did that remark of mine turn you into flesh and blood p' •■No, it only made me visible to you. I am unsubstantial, just as othor spirits are.'

This remark prodded mo with a sharp misgiving. If ho was unsubstantial, how was I going to kill him ? But 1 dissem bled, and said persuasively : ' Conscience, it isn't sociable of you to keep at such a distance. Como down and take another smoke.'

This was answered with a look that was full of derision, and with this observation :

t Come whero you can get at me and kill me P'

' All right.' said I to myself; 'so it seems a spirit can be killed ; there will bo ono spirit lacking in this world presently. Then I said aloud : ' Friend'—

'There; wait a bit. I am not your friend, I am your enemy ; I am not your equal, I am your master. Call mo 'my lord,' if you please.' ' I don't like such titles. lam willing to call you Sir. That is as far, as'— ' We will have no argument about this. Just obey ; that is all.'

' Very well, my lord —I was going to ask you how long you will be visible to me?'

' Always!'

I broke out with strong indignation: ' This is simply an outrage. You have dogged, and dogged me all tho days of my life, invisible. That was misery enough ; now to have such a looking thing as you tagging after me like another shadow all the rest of my days is an intolerable pros pect. You have my opinion, my lord. ' My lad, there was never so pleased a conscience in this world as I was when you made me visible. It gives me incon ceivable advantage. I shall always address you henceforth in your own sniveling drawl —baby!' but remember the flag of truce!'

'Ah, I forgot that. I will try to be civil; and you try it, too, for a novelty. The idea of a civil conscience ! It is a good joke ; an excellent joke. All the con sciences I ever heard of wero nagging, badgering,fault-finding, execrable savages! Yes ; and always iv a sweat about some poor little insiguficant trifle or other— destruction catch tho lot of them, I say ! Now tell me, why is it that a conscience can't haul a man over the coals once for an offense, and then leave him alone P ' Well, we like it; that suffices.' ' Do you do it with tho honest intent to improve a man ?'

' The purpose of it is to improve the man, but we are merely disinterested agents. We are appointed by authority, and haven't anything to say in theTmatter. Weoboy orders and leave the consequences where they belong. But lam willing to admit this much: we do crowd the orders a trifle when we get a chance, which is most of the time. And when we get hold of a man of a peculiarly sensitive nature, oh, but we do haze him !

'I see, now, why you always have been| a trifle inconsistent with me. In your anxiety to get all.the juice you can out of a sin, you mako a man repent of it in threo or four different ways. For instance, you found fault with me for lying to that tramp, and I suffered over that. But it was only yesterday .that I told a tramp the square truth, to wit, that it being regarded as bad citizenship to encourage vagrancy, I would give him nothing. What did you do then P Why you made me say to myself. * Ah, it would have been so much kinder and more blameless to ease him off with a little white lie, and send him away feeling that if he could not have bread, the gentle treatment was at least something to be greatful for !' Well, I suffered all day about that-. Three days before, I had fed a tramp, and fed him freely, supposing it; a virtuous act. Straight off you said ' Oh, false citizen, to have fed a tramp !' and I suffered as usual. I gave a tramp work; you objected to it—after the contract was made, ot course; you never speak up beforehand. Next, I refused a tramp work ; you objected to that. Next 1 proposed to kill a tramp; you kept me

awake all night, oozing remorse at every pore. Sure I was going to bo right this time, I sent the next tramp away with my benediction ; and I wish you may live as long as I do, if you didn't make me smart all night again because I didn't kill him. Ts there any way of satisfying that malignant invention which is caled a conscience P' ' Well, none that I propose to tell you my son. I don't care what act you may turn your hand to, I can straightway whisper a word in your ear and make you think you have committed a dreadful meanness. It is my business, and my joy, to mako you repent. . , ' ~c «I never did a thing m all my lite, virtuous or otherwise, that I didn't repent of within twenty-four hours- In church last Sunday I listened to a charity sermon. My first impulse was to give three hundred and fifty dollars ; I repented of that, and reduced it a hundred ; repented of that, and reduced it another hundred ; repented of that, and reduced it another hundred ; repented of that, and reduced the remain ing fifty to twenty-five ; repented of that, and came down to fifteen ; repented of that, aud came down to two dollars and a half; and when the plate came round at last, I repented once more, and contributed ten cents. Woll, when I got home, I did wish to goodness I had that ten cents back' again ! You never did let me get through a charity sermon without having something to sweat about.' «And I never shall. You can depend

on me.' ' Look here ; not tobe too personal, I think you are about the shabbiest and most contemptible, little shriveled- U p reptile that can be imagined. lam grate ful enough that you are invisible to other people, for I would die with shame to be seen with such a mildewed conscience,as

you are.' ' Oh, come ! who is to blame?'

* I don't know.'

* Why you are ; nobody else.' ' Confound you, I wasn't consulted about your personal appearance.' * I don't care, you had a good deal to do with it, nevertheless. You had a largo conscience once ; if you've a small con science now, I reckon there are reasons for it. You see, you used to b<j conscien tious about a great many things ; It was a great many years ago. You probably do not remember it now. Well,: I took a great interest in my work, and I enjoyed the anguish which certain pet sins of yours afflicted you. Of course I soon began to lose ground then, and shrivel a little in stature, got moldy, and grew deformed. The more I weakened, the more stubborn ly you fastened on to those particular sins ; till at last the places on my person that represent those particular vice 3 became as callous as shark-skin. When people plead with y?u at this late day to quit that vice, that old callous place seems to enlarge. It exerts a mysterous, snlothering effect; and presently I, your faithful hater, your devoted Conscience, go sound asleep ! Sound ? it is no name for it. I couldn't hear it thunder at such a time.'

' This is flattering ; you must be asleep a good part of your time ?' ' Yes, of late years. I should bo asleep all the time, but for the help I get.' ' Who helps you ?'

* Other consciences. Whenever a person whose conscience lam acquainted with tries to plead with you about the vices you are callous to, I get my friend to give his client a pang concerning some villanyoi his own, and that shuts off his meddling and starts him off to hunt personal consolation.'

' But if you had only been good enough to mention these facts some thirty years ago, I should have turned my particular attention to sin, and I think that by this time I should have had you pretty per manently asleep on the entire list of human vices. That is about the style of conscience lam pining for. You are not fit to be in society, in my opinion. Do you know a good many consciences in this section?'

' Plenty of them.'

' I would give anything to see some of them ! Could you bring them here ? And would they be visible to mo ?' ' Certainly not.' ,

* I suppose I ought to have known that without asking. Tell me about my neighbor Thompson's conscience please.' ' Well, he is a shade under four and a half feet high ; used to be a blonde ; is a brunette, now, but still shapely and comely ?'

' Well, Thompson is a good fellow. Do you know Tom Smith's conscience P'

* I have^ known him from childhood. He was thirteen inches high, and rather sluggish when he was two years old—as nearly all of us are at that age. He is thirty feet high now and the stateliest figure in America. Never sleeps. He is the most active and energetic member of the New England Conscience Club; is President of it. Night and day you can find him pegging away at Smith, panting with his labor, countenance all alive with enjoyment. He almost tortues the soul out of Smith.'

' Smith is the noblest man in all this section, and the purest ;• and yet is always breaking, his heart because he cannot be good! Only a conscience could find pleasure in heaping agony upon a spirit like that. Do you know my aunt Mary's conscience ?'

' I have seen her at a distance, but am not acquainted with her. She lives in the open air altogether, because no door is largo enough to admit her.'

' I can believe that. Let me see. ]) 0 Si you know the consaience of that publisher who once stole some sketches of mine for a ' series' of his, and then left me to p a? the law expenses I had to incur ia order to choke him offp' ' Yes. He has a wide fame. He wag exhibited, a month ago, with some Mother antiquities for the benefit of a recent member of the Cabinet's conscience, that was starving in exile.^ Tickets and fares were high. The publisher's conscience ' which was to have been tho main featureof the entertainment, was a failure— as! 8n exhibition. He was there, but what of I that? The management had provided, a microscope with a magnifying power'of 1 only thirty thousand diameters, and,go I nobody got to see him, after all. But~' Just here there was an eager footstept I on the stair ; I opened the door,, and ml § aunt j&ary burst into ths room, it'wasa I joyful meeting, and a cheery bombard. I ment of questions and answers concerning* I family matters ensued. By and. byiaj I aunt said : . ii, j ' But I am a going to abuse you a little 1 now. You promised me, the dayLg w l. you last, that you would look after .% needs of the poor family around the cornet as faithfully as I had done it mygelf Well' I found out by accident that you failed of your promise. Wag that 1 right ?' „. ' I In simple truth, I had never thought of ri that family a second ,timel r ; And now''•' such a splintering of guilt shot through i me! I glanced up at my Conscience. I Plainly my heavy heart was affecting him. His body was droopingfforward he seemed about to fall from the booicaw! My aunt continued: ' And think how you have neglected my poor protege at the almshouse, you dear, hard hoar ted promise breaker. Tblushed 1 scarlet, and my tongue was tied. As the sense of guilty negligence waxed sharper and stronger, my Conscience began to ■ isway heavily back and forth; and wheal my aunt, after a little pause, said in a I grieved tone : ' Since _ you never! once I went to see her, maybe it will not distress I you to know, that poor child died months ago, utterly friendless and forsaken!' f My Conscience could no longer bear up if under the weight of my sufferings, bat i tumbled headlong from his high perch, ; and struck the floor with a dull leaden J thump. In a fever of expectancy I sprang to the door, locked it, placed my back against it, and bent a watchful gaze upon my struggling master. .-.-•;■ haa Jgm <Oh, what can be the matter J' ex-; claimed my aunt, shrinking from me^ anj I following with her frightened eyes the direction of mine. My aunt cried.out: ' Oh, do not look so! You appal mc! Oh, what can the matter beP-JWhatin it you see ? Why do you stare so P Why f do you work your finders like thatP' 'Peace, woman!' I said m a hoarse ■■ whisper. ' Look elsewhere.; ; pay no attention to mc; it is nothing—nothing,1. lam often this way. It will pass miV moment. It comes from smoking.' | My aunt wrung her hands, and said:p ' Oh, I knew how it would be; I knef.it| would.come to this at last! Oh, I implore J you to crush out that fatal habit whilcit may yet be time ! You must not, yon shall not, be deaf to my supplication!: longer!' My straggling Conscience i. showed sudden signs of weariness! and - began to feel drowsy, closed his^eyesanJ fell fast asleep. , r s § jj I With, an pxultant shovtl sprang past my aunt, and in an instant I had my 1 loa^ foe by the throat. After so many 'i years of waiting and longing, he was mis at last. I torehim to shreds and frag ments. I rent the fragments to bits. If cast tho bleeding rubbish into the fire,: and drew into my nostrils the grateful in. j cense of my brute offering. At last and ? forever, my Conscience was dead ! I was a free man ! I turned uponmj auut, who was almost petrified -.will:.. terror, and shouted— • ,;.

' Out of this with your paupers, yonij charities, your reforms, your ■ pestilent! morals! You behold before you a if;! whose life conflict is done, whose souliii at peace ; a man whose heart is, dead to sorrow, dead to suffering, dead to remoflJ a man without a conscience ! : Inmyjoj * I spare you, though I could throttle JM ; and never feel a pang ! Fly !' She fled. Since that day -my life Mil bliss. Bliss, unalloyed bliss. Nothii! in all the korld ccould persuade me have a conscience again. I settled allmj outstanding scores, and began the' wri anew. I killed thirty-eight persons during the first two weeks, all of them on aeconni of ancient grudges. I burned a dwelling that interrupted my view. I swindled', widow and some orphans out of 4*l last cow, whichis a very good one,uWp not a thoroughbred, I believe, l^f also committed scores of crimes of.vatw kinds, aud have enjoyed any «*.' exceedingly, whereas it would ;fonw have broken my heart and turned 8! hair gray, I have no doubt. •i$ M In conclusion I wish to state, -by I*l X advertisenent, that medical: colleges im ing assorted tramps for scientificpurp*; citner by the gross, by cordmeasuren«*: or per ton, will do well to examutf''1"! lot in my cellar before purchasing el#'| where, as these were selected and pi#f| by myself, and can be had at a low.*j : because 1 wish to clear out my. 4m*\. get ready, for the spring trade.--"* 511 Twain in the 'Atlantic Monthly/^'

JEEWexilii.g' *§J"fc»B* Supplement, 9 l^^O

Printed and published by the proprietor, jg Brett, of Parnell, at his General SfeamJgSJl Oflico, Wyndham-street, in the OH* of Au** 3"l^ New Zealand, ; Saturday, July 29, I§7Q