Bertrand.--"I withdrew, trembling convulsively, feeling a great desire for repose. I fell asleep, no matter where, and slept for several hours; but during this sleep I heard everything that passed around me! I have sometimes exhumed from ten to fifteen bodies in a night. I dug them up with my hands, which were often torn and bleeding with the labor I underwent; but I minded nothing, so that I could get at them. The guardians fired at me one night and wounded me, but that did not prevent my returning the next. This desire seized me generally about once a fortnight." Strange to say, the perpetrator of all these terrors was "gentle and kind to the living, and especially beloved in his regiment for his frankness and gayety." [From Blackwood's Magazine.] MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. _Continued from Page 582._ BOOK II.--INITIAL CHAPTER:--INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE INITIAL CHAPTERS. "There can't be a doubt," said my father, "that to each of the main divisions of your work--whether you call them Books or Parts--you should prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter." _Pisistratus._--"Can't be a doubt, sir! Why so?" _Mr. Caxton._--"Fielding lays it down as an indispensable rule, which he supports by his example; and Fielding was an artistical writer, and knew what he was about." _Pisistratus._--"Do you remember any of his reasons, sir?" _Mr. Caxton._--"Why, indeed, Fielding says very justly that he is not bound to assign any reason; but he does assign a good many, here and there--to find which, I refer you to _Tom Jones_. I will only observe, that one of his reasons, which is unanswerable, runs to the effect that thus, in every Part or Book, the reader has the advantage of beginning at the fourth or fifth page instead of the first--'a matter by no means of trivial consequence,' saith Fielding, 'to persons who read books with no other view than to say they have read them--a more general motive to reading than is commonly imagined; and from which not only law books and good books, but the pages of Homer and Virgil, of Swift and Cervantes, have been often turned over.' There," cried my father triumphantly, "I will lay a shilling to twopence that I have quoted the very words." _Mrs. Caxton._--"Dear me, that only means skipping: I don't see any great advantage in writing a chapter, merely for people to skip it." _Pisistratus._--"Neither do I!"