Northern Ohio journal. [volume] (Painesville, Ohio) 1872-1896, 1874-03-14
CHAPTER III,

"Let us have (a) piece,'-TwEED.
"Once upon midnight dreary, while Stun
bled, weak and weary
over many curb and sidewalk, searching for
suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one
Rapplng on my head so Sore once or twice and
then some more"
Hines after Poe-about thirty years after
We Will pass over period of sixty or
seventy years, and take the kind reader
to the quiet little town ofBlandengsburg.
1t is a bright spring morning in Novem-
Der or October, | forget which, and all
nature seemed hushed in silence. No
sound breaks the death like stiffness of
the midnight hour, save the rushing of
the trains as they pass every fifteen
minutes or SO, and the soft, melodious
voices of between two or three thousand
bull-frogs as they coo merrily in the
dam mill-pond hard by. What a scene
for an artist! How those merry voices
would shine on canvas! The gorgeous
ness of the resplendent MONDAY orb as
it lit up the alabaster leaves of the sweet
potato vines and the beautiful ever
greens, now faded by the winter frosts.
was too, too lovely for my feeble pen
(Gillott's No. 414,) now to describe, and,
really come to think of it, do not know
as it is material to our deeply interesting
tale, and so we will hurry on to the
bloOd-stained hatohet.
Leaving nature then to take care of
itself, we will enter little vine covered
cottage, Il am not quite sure about its
being vlne-covered, but most cottages
in novels, are, so 1 will risk this one
where two young men are seated at a
marble-top table, (not real marble-imi-
tation,) engaged in the seductive game
of authors. One of them is a stran GER to
us, but the other we have certainly met
with before in our little autobiograpfy.
Them eyes! those nose, those large
ears. that No. IL shoes. If the reader
has good me emory, he can turn back a
few leaves to the closing paragraph of
Chapter IA, and there he will find the
same person.
'Can it be!' hear you exclaim,
Yes, dear reader, it really is our hero.
Rodolplo. Time has worked no
changes in his noble form, except. per-
haps, to expand it considerably. His
broad breast has grown a great deal
broader, his feet have expanded some
what, and his ears have assumed more
startling proportions. But he is still as
young as ever, and chews stick licorice
and slippery-elm as in the days of yore
Escaping from justice, into whose
his little indiscretion so yividly des-
cribed in Chapter III, he had fled to Hy-
attsville, thence to Shamoken via plank
road, and finally brought up in Bladens-
burg, where we now find him. We have
said that he was engaged in the seduc-
tive game of authors. l was wrong.
They were playing jackStraws. l am a
little tongue-tied, and conld not see ex-
aetly what they were doing, there was
so much noise in the room. Long into
the night they had played, but as yet
neither had won any money, which is
accounted for by the fact that nothing
had been put up. Midnight, as we have
said, was approaching. All was still
without; save the noise of the passing
trains and the cooing of the two thou
sand bull-frogs, nothing broke the
death-like stiffness of the hour. Sud-
denly dismal groan was heard, then a
pair of groans. The players started to
their feet. Then came another Sroan
three more, and at each groan thou
sand hairs stood up OH end OH the heads
of the players, which made two thou
sand standing hairs at each groa1. The
door slowly opened and shrouded
| form entered, and Immediately the
smell of birthstone could be distinctly
heard III the distance. The figure raised
It's loHS Shihiy manu- anu polnIlnS 1t at
Rodolpho said, in a sepulchral voice:
'Rodolpho, Rodolpho, go back to your
home in Swineville, Ernestine awaits
you. She is dying for you. Even now
she may be dead, ah. ahem.'
CHAPTER ".
'Dear mother I've come home to sdie in four
| parts. s."-lBID.
"The duty on chewing gum, as pro-
vided by the act of 1893, will hereafter
be sixty per cent. al Udlorem by the
stick" Letter of Secretary Of Treasury
to the Collector at Bangor.-J. G. Me.
We will now slide back about CEN
tury, and invite the aifectionate reader
to take peep into the village which
gave birth--so to speak--of our hero
and heroine. IL is .nidnight-come to
think of it, though, it is not midnight,
but was once. Why that gloom that