.

A TRAGEDY.
Who knows?
the man is proven by the hour.
In his stately bedroom on the second floor of the quietest house in Russell Square Mr.Thomas Oscard--the eccentric Oscard--lay, perhaps, a-dying.
Thomas Oscard had written the finest history of an extinct people that had ever been penned; and it has been decreed that he who writes a fine history or paints a fine picture can hardly be too eccentric.

Our business, however, does not lie in the life of this historian--a life which certain grave wiseacres from the West End had shaken their heads over a few hours before we find him lying prone on a four-poster counting for the thousandth time the number of tassels fringing the roof of it.

In bold contradiction to the medical opinion, the nurse was, however, hopeful.

Whether this comforting condition of mind arose from long experience of the ways of doctors, or from an acquired philosophy, it is not our place to inquire.