Of wine-stained paper scribbled with such rhymes
Men mount to heaven, and loud laughter springs
From hell's midpit, whose fuel is such rhymes."

PAUL VERVILLE. _Nascitur_.




I


At a very remote period, when editorials were mostly devoted to
discussion as to whether the Democratic Convention (shortly to be held
in Chicago) would or would not declare in favor of bi-metallism; when
golf was a novel form of recreation in America, and people disputed how
to pronounce its name, and pedestrians still turned to stare after an
automobile; when, according to the fashion notes, "the godet skirts and
huge sleeves of the present modes" were already doomed to extinction;
when the baseball season had just begun, and some of our people were
discussing the national game, and others the spectacular burning of the
old Pennsylvania Railway depot at Thirty-third and Market Street in
Philadelphia, and yet others the significance of General Fitzhugh Lee's
recent appointment as consul-general to Habana:--at this remote time,
Lichfield talked of nothing except the Pendomer divorce case.

And Colonel Rudolph Musgrave had very narrowly escaped being named as
the co-respondent. This much, at least, all Lichfield knew when George
Pendomer--evincing unsuspected funds of generosity--permitted his wife
to secure a divorce on the euphemistic grounds of "desertion." John