When we are not occupied in making machinery, we are (mentally speaking) the most slovenly people in the universe." "So much," I thought to myself, "for a foreign education! He has learned that way of girding at us in France, I suppose." Mr.Franklin took up the lost thread, and went on.
"My father," he said, "got the papers he wanted, and never saw his brother-in-law again from that time.

Year after year, on the prearranged days, the prearranged letter came from the Colonel, and was opened by Mr.Bruff.I have seen the letters, in a heap, all of them written in the same brief, business-like form of words: 'Sir,--This is to certify that I am still a living man.

Let the Diamond be.

John Herncastle.' That was all he ever wrote, and that came regularly to the day; until some six or eight months since, when the form of the letter varied for the first time.

It ran now: 'Sir,--They tell me I am dying.