drivel is this! Gentlemen, _we_ live in the nineteenth century!” The aspersion of Lord Brougham—for thus he considered the anecdote—was very bitter to him. He was a man of few enthusiasms, and such hero-worship as was possible to him had been expended upon the great lights of his profession whose acquaintance he had formed in his early reading of law, some twenty years ago. He so dwelt upon this point that the jury received the valuable impression that Henry Brougham was a chancellor and a “valley man,” hailing from Knoxville, perhaps, and was held in high esteem by the lawyers in Shaftesville, and that Harshaw seemed to think the attorney-general had slandered him. He wrenched himself from this phase of the subject with some difficulty. “Gentlemen,” he said sarcastically, “the attorney-general is a mighty smart man. He’s got a heap of learning lately about visions.” He glanced down obliquely at his opponent; he would have given a good deal to know how the counsel for the State came by his information. He could have sworn that it was not indigenous. “But there are plenty of folks in this town could have told him just as much and more. He’s mighty particular to show the difference between _il_-lusion and _de_-lusion, and hallucination and mania. Visions! That ain’t what _we_ call ’em, gentlemen. Down here in the flat woods we call ’em—‘snakes’!” The hit told, and he went on, encouraged. “Right over yonder in Tim Becker’s saloon they keep every assortment of vision. Men have seen green rabbits there, and black dogs, and snakes, and whole menageries of hallucinations. Is anybody going to believe Alethea Sayles had the jim-jams that night, coming from camp-meeting? She had no call to see visions! This girl had her head in her hands; she was leaning on the fence; she felt some one touch her; she looked up, and saw the boy before her. Mighty few of the ghosts that we have heard of had such consistency of entity as to make their presence perceived by the sense of touch; on the contrary, it is thus that their unreality is often demonstrated in these same fables. A lady passes her fan through one immaterial image. A man thrusts his knife vainly into the misty heart of another. And why does this instance differ? Because, gentlemen, there was no phantom. It was Tad Simpkins in flesh and blood. The fugitive boy sees Alethea Sayles, whom he knows well; he is about to appeal to her; he lays his hand on her hand. She lifts her head, and at the unexpected appari—sight, she screams, and the foolish boy is frightened, and flees!”