"Gentlemen," said I, in a clear, collected voice, "before proceeding to distribute the mail, allow me to offer a few brief remarks." I had written out this speech, and committed it to memory. "It is very natural that you should have great curiosity to know by what means I have managed to redeem the pledge that I gave you a short time ago. In the presence of gentlemen so enlightened as you are, I hardly need to say that the speedy communication which I have been enabled to make with the Western world is effected by no supernatural agency, but by a wonderful discovery in the realms of nature, the precise character of which I do not at present consider it expedient to disclose. Let it suffice, that I am able to furnish you, at reasonable rates, with the latest intelligence from the United States of America; and I wish it to be distinctly understood, that if I ever have reason to suspect that my movements are watched, or that any efforts are made to detect my secret, from that time my contract with you is at an end. I also desire to stipulate that no statement of my transactions with you shall be allowed to find its way into the public prints, either in China or America. Let the whole matter remain a profound secret between us; your own interest will be consulted by this as well as mine. If, indeed, it should so happen that you should ever see any remarkable and novel movement in the heavens, of course I cannot hinder you from forming your own impressions, and making your own deductions from the phenomena. "And now, gentlemen, every morning between ten and eleven o'clock, I propose to be here with the papers; _price one dollar per copy, cash on delivery_." The bundle, containing one hundred papers, was immediately disposed of; some gentlemen taking two or three, and others half a dozen. The tongues of my patrons were now unloosed, and they all acceded unhesitatingly to the terms which I had proposed. An elderly Englishman, with a very white waistcoat, and a very large watch-chain, came up to me, and, patting my shoulder, said, "Why, my son, you have done better than you promised; you have given us the newspapers in much less than thirty-six hours after their issue at home." "Yes, sir," I replied; "I intended to get them here in about _sixteen_ hours; but I thought it more prudent to say thirty-six, because--because"--I hardly knew what reason to give, without betraying myself--"because, sir, I wasn't certain how the magnetic currents might operate." "Ah-hah-ah, I begin to see. Magnetic currents in the heavens, in the atmosphere." "Yes, sir," I answered promptly, "in the _atmosphere_." This was true enough; but I could not say in the _heavens_, without telling an untruth; and this I always regarded as a great sin. "Don't you think," continued my English friend, "that, when you bring the American papers over, you could just stop on the way, and get a copy or two of 'The London Times'?" "I do not go for the papers myself."