Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1887 — Page 6

“owid” to spanro. BY BEPPO. Springtime is here with its gladness. Its pare, balmy air and bright sky; That early reminder, the hand-organ grinder, Plays “Walt Till the Clouds 801 l By." Springtime is here with its glory, Muking all nature rejoice; Tnat public offender, the garden-truck vender, la rending the air with his voice. Springtime is here with Its pleasures— The song-birds’ notes scarcely cease ; The gay bock beer signs, in unique designs, Quote schooners at five cents apiece. Springtime is here with its splendor— Its glorious beauty enchants; The street sprinkling cart has made a new start, Besmearing ten-dollar spring pants. Springtime is here with its verdure, Inspiring poetical rhymes; The circus appears, as in previous years, To gather spare dollars and dimes. Springtime, loved season, you're welcome, Bestowing your pleasures and joys, With sweet-scented flowers and refreshing showers, Base-ball clubs and bare-footed boys.

ALIVE AT HER BURIAL.

* I. From a boy, it was my steadfast ambition to be a physician; and the desire grew with my growth, and increased from the . opposition with wMch it met at the hands of my friends and relations. Early in life, aB I have said, the profession seemed to me desirable above any other; not so much from the realization of its great nsefnlness as from a sense of the power which its votaries obtain over their fellow-creatures. And sometimes, even while a mere child, precocious as I was, in reading the tales of enchantment which are often set before the young, instead of a feeling of awe and amazement, I actually entertained one of oontempt. “Magicians and genii, forsooth,” was my thought, “whose business was only to invoke idle spirits! I can and wiil be a mightier magician than these!” But, lest 1 should grow too digressive in these multiplying reminiscences, let me hasten to my narrative. Barely three years had elapsed from the first day of my seclusion in rpy study, when I again emerged into the world, prepared to fulfill those dreams which haunted mv pillow, dreams, not of wealth or love, but of power, of mastery. I was well known in the community in which I now’ took up my residence, and many affected to scoff and sneer at my pretensions. At such, however, I could well afford to smile. My appearance, it is true, was boyish and unprepossessing in the extreme. I was barely twenty-two, and the pale cheek and restlessness of the eye, contracted by incessant application to books, which, at this time, characterized me, were not well calculated to win either confidence or faith. But as for myself, I knew that there was that within me w hich, sooner or later, would cause my name to be upon every tongue, and elevate me to the position which I well knew my genius merited. And I was right. Commencing among the lower classes of the great city—for among these I was at first compelled to operate and practice—a rumor of the wonderful skill and knowledge which the “boy physician,” as they were pleased to name me. was continually displaying, spread to the upper circles of its fastidious society. And more, I suspect, to demonstrate the falsity of the rumors, and to crash out a new aspirant and a future rival, than because of any better motive, I was one day summoned to the city hospital to examine a difficult case that had arisen there. I instantly obeyed the summons, for it was an opportunity not to be neglected; and they conducted me to one of the wards, where all the professors of medicine were assembled from all parts of the city, and among them many whose renown had been acquired by a lifetime of laborious toil and study. One of these latter took me patronizingly by the hand and led me to the couch where a poor sufferer lay writhing in the last convulsions of a dissolution caused by the effects of a most virulent vegetable poison. An involuntary and contemptuous smile went round tho room as he did so. “Here, my young friend,” he observed, “is your patient. He is beyond our influence, but your extraordinary medical knowledge may perhaps benefit him. Proceed; you certainly caunot injure him.” My blood tingled beneath this* insult, which could not even respect the presence of death, but my time for triumph had now arrived. Assuming a coolness which confounded my professional brethren, Hooked at my watch and observed: “Gentlemen, in three minutes this man will have breathed his last, supposing, you will understand, lhat he remains under your treatment! But lam here; you have done well to call me, and if you will repress your prejudices and give me your strict attention, 1 will show you a mode of Eroeedure which you cannot learn from ooks.” 11. Half an hour quickly elapsed, and at its expiration I stepped back from the bedside, triumphant in my victory, in secret—externally as cool and impassive as before. Life, quiveiing in the balance, and flickering to extinction, had been restored beneath my hands; the feeble, fluttering pulse was quickened, the sluggish current of vitality leaped into aroused action, and falling upon his knees at my feet, the patient deliberately kissed my hands, and hailed me as his benefactor. Amazed and bewildered beyond description, as they beheld my unheard-of treatment and its marvelous results, the faculty and all present remained dumb for a moment, and then, as their consciousness of my merits and superiority shamed them into generosity, the whole ward rang with their enthusiastic plaudits, and, gathering around me, they confessed themselves vanquished, and strove with each other for the honor of taking me by the hand. Inwaidly, I gloried in this first pul lie recognition of my genius; but, repressing all outward manifestations of the feeling. I treated them with a cool suavity which nonplused and confounded them. Nor was the feeling unmixed with one of triumph. T%ey the sages and veterans of the profession, forsooth ! I had without difficulty proved them tne tyros. My name and fame were now established; the walls of the hospital were not strong enough to shut from the world the wonderful story of the scene they had witnessed. My name was mentioned with cariosity, with approbation, and with tearful blessing; Bv*n pointed me out to each other, as I vauei the streets, as the wonderj nl youth, who**- precocious genius was undoubtedly too expansive for his body. And, anxious

that it might not be thought that my wonderful successes hitherto had been the result of more accident, I labored day and night in the manifold duties of my profession, bringing every faculty of mind to bear upon each particular case, so that ere a month had elapsed since my achievement at the hospital, the whole city was ringing with my praises. The doors of mansions of wealth and luxury, which would have been barred against me as a bnmble individual, were eagerly opened to me as a physician, and soon all acknowledged my capacity. • I hardly gave myself time to rest or sleep; my life at this period was one long contest with death, in which I was invariably the victor. I gloried in this existence because I loved it, and because it was the accomplishment of that ambition which the sense of my own greatness could not deteriorate. I might have fabulously enriched myself in a brief time, but to wealth I was utterly indifferent. I cared for nothing, in fact, bat the practice of my profession, which daily became more fascinating as it daily increased my reputation. Arriving at my lodgings one dark and stormy night jus : t as the clock tolled the hour of twelve, I threw myself upon the bed, exhausted, both in mind and body, from hours of professional labor, and anxious for repose. This, however, Was denied me. A furious peal of the door-bell startled me to my feet, and learning from the messenger at tne door where my presence was required, I again sallied forth into the darkness, and now towurd one of the most aristocratic mansions in the city. Arriving, I found its inmates hurrying to and fro with pale laces and tears of distress; and, sternly repelling all efforts on their part to inform me of the character of the malady, I demanded to see the patient. They led me to her chamber, gorgeous in its luxurious appointments, and tdere, upon a conch of snowy whiteness, lay a young girl, beautiful as my mo t perfect conceptions of beauty, but pulseless and, apparently, lifeless. For once, while 1 gazed upon the bewildering picture of her loveliness, I forgot my nature and my duty, in the imagination that I saw a matchless vision of sleep, and that she would awaken and smile upon me while I looked. Could I express all the emotions that swept, hurricane-like, through my ,d zzying brain, during that moment, I should not need to justify myself for my after conduct; nor do I think that any person who perfectly comprehends what I have thus far written, and can imagine me as I stood by that bedside, lost for the moment to my one idea, and awakened for the first time in my life to an overpoweriug consciousness of beauty—no such person, I say, can censure me very deeply for what afterward happened. I demanded an interview with the father of my patient. He came, and I recognized him as one whom I had often heard of— an opulent, sordid old man, loving only his goid and this young girl, the only other living member of his family. But he was very pale now, and deeply agitated, and he spoke with wild and buried earnestness. “Save her, Doctor,” he implored, “and everything I own is yours. Here are other physicians, consult them, and ” “I want no consultation with them,” I interrupted, turning upon them as contemptuous a glance as they had once bestowed on me.

“Now listen to me, old man, and do not interrupt me, for time is precious. Here is no ordinary disease; those gentlemen will tell you that they never before encountered symptoms like these.” “They have told me so!” the frantic father exclaimed. “Well, it puzzles them; they are powerless, and can afford no relief. It is, indeed, a dark, mysterious, and terrible malady, and he who would cope with it must be a person of no ordinary skill.” “But you have thut skill and knowledge; you can save her.” “Yes; and I alone in all this great city!” I replied exnltingly. “And I will save her, although the strife must be a long and a weary one; I will restore her to life upon one condition only.” “Name it, then, quickly. You wish a reward? I will give you gold ” “Peace, sir; I want none of your gold. I wish a reward, it is true, and that reward is —herself!” The father started back in angry amazement, and bade me explain my meaning. I did so, clearly and distinctly, making him comprehend that only upon the promise of the hand of his daughter in marriage would I undertake her cure. “And who are you?” he contemptuously asked, forgetting for the moment his anxiety. “Who are your parents? what is your rank? and where is your wealth? Who are you who seek to force an alliauce upon the proudest and wealthiest family of F !” “I am the man, and the only man,” was my deliberate answer, “who can reclaim your daughter from the destroyer! Look at her; he has already seized upon her, and in me is your only hope. You can not comprehend the passion which entered into my heart from the firri instant that my eyes rested on her; and 1 have only to say that,.rather than loso her for myself, such is my desperation that 1 would see her perish! Now, decide quickly.” Our conversation had, of course, been unheard by the other physicians present, who had withdrawn to the further end of the chamber upon my entrance. The old man clasped his hands and looked toward them wito an expression of mute despair upon his hard, avaricious fa-'e; they merely shook their heads and looked toward me. “Five minutes hence it may be too late!” I said in an undertone. He started, gave a groan of pain, and pain, and then whispered: “Save her, then, strange, inramprehensible being—save her at any sacrifice! Yet I know not that I can control her affections for you, when she recovers ” “I do not ask it of you, ” w:as my interruption. “I wifi save her and risk tho event, provided you will promise to place no restraint whatever upon her wiil.” He nodded affirmatively, for he could not speak. Selecting one of the attendant physicians to assist me, I peremptorily compelled all others to leave the.room, and thus secured from interruption I bent every nerve to the mighty wrestle I had undertaken with the destroyer. He hovered ovt r the couch, his breath was upon our cheeks, his presence was certain, almost perceptible, within the chamber. From his grasp I was now to rescue youth and beauty, and to win a prize for myself to wear hereafter. ill. As I had predicted, the malady was stubborn and tenacious in its gra«p, yielding only after the lapse of almost a month from the night of its inception. Toothers, it was doubtful; to myself never. I knew toy resources and the whole extent of the

danger, deeply alarming as it was ; and from the first I was enabled to name almost the hoar when the hold of the disease would be broken. The first hours of her convalescence I claimed for myself, excluding even her father from the room. Sitting by her bedside, I counted the first deep, regular inspiration which announced her return to life and health. Her large, dark eyes slowly unclosed and rested first upon my face, not with a look of wonder and inquiry, for she seemed instinctively to comprehend all that had happened, but with a sweet, soft fascination which, of itself, repaid me for all my labor and care. “I think I nude:s and what has occurred,” she said. “I Lave been ill, very ill, for a long time. Your face is strangely familiar; strange that the remembrance of it should last bej’ond the impression it produced upon me in the hour of sickness. are the physician?” I assented. “And you have saved me? I feel it—l know it; and may God bless you forever!” A small, white hand was stretched forth to me. I took it and pressed it fervently to my lips, and with the act, came the impulse to speak and lay bare my whole heart to her. And I did so, freely and unreservedly, not even withholding the extraordinary scene in her chamber, which 1 have described. I strove to give her a vivid picture of my life up to this lime, speaking first of the one absorbing idea which had engrossed every faculty of mind, and bow the passion of love had been first excited in my breast. When I had finished, she answered, and as I listened, enraptured, to the utterance of that pure and guileless heart, I knew that I was beloved, not because I had preserved her from the grave, but because I was worthy to be loved! The purposes of my narrative do not require that I should speak particularly of the year that followed the recovery of Edna. We were betrothed from that moment, and from that moment a new existence opened to me. I toiled now, not merely for fame, or to gratify myself by the exhibition of my power, but for the more substantial rewards of that toil which had always been mine when I chose to take them. My success continued undiminished; money came to ine at my command, and even Edna’s father now looked approvingly upon our intimacy. The day had at length been set for our union; and" as it drew rapidly near I accustomed myself more and more to the society of my betrothed, waiting expectantly for the time when it should be mine exclusively. Long practice—perhaps, I should say extensive —had accustomed me to detect signs and symptoms, withont my attention being called to the person in whom they appeared. And while sitting beside Edna one day, I fancied that I could perceive in her appearance some indications of indisposition. In answer to my anxious questions, she at first denied that she felt at all unwell, and then confessed to a sensation of lassitude, of physical weariness, which had already lasted several days. There seemed to be nothing alarming in this, but as several days more elapsed and I secretly noticed that this weariness seemed to increase, I became still more anxious. Tije symptoms seemed to portend nothing; my medical information, extensive as it was, suggested no bodily infirmity which could begin thus, and I was finally constrained to dismiss all apprehension Irom my mind. Two days only intervened before that which had been appointed for our wedding. It had become a necessity for me to call upon Edna daily; and early in the evening of the day which is now referred to, I presented myself at tho mansion, and bade the servant inform her mistresi that I was in the parlor. I heard her steps as she ascended tne stairs; half a minute more may have elapsed, and teen I heard a scream from Edna’s chamber which sent my impetuous blood back, curdling to my heart. A thousand ideas Hashed instantly through the dizzy chaos of my brain, and prominent among them, the recollection of Edna’s indisposition of a few days before. Springing wildly up the stairway, 1 encountered" the girl at the landing. She was pale and speechless, and could only point toward tr.e room of her mistress. Hastening past her, a dozen apprehensions preying at my heait, I entered it.

Edna lay upon the bed, and, as I advanced, I uttered her name. There was no reply. I took her hand, and its icy coldness struok a chill to my heatt; exploring the wrist I discovered, to my horror, that it was entirely pulseless! I investigated no further--why should I? The horrible, stupefying truth that Death and I were face to face, was already sufficiently apparent; and, every particle of physical and mental vigor deserting me, I fell forward upon the couch at her feet, and wept hot and bitter tears of agony. There I was discovered when the alarm had spread, and horrified friends filled the apartment. And there I persisted in lying through the night, inert and heart-broken. The following day passed drearily away, as did also the next. Upon the third she was to be buried. Never, for a moment, did 1 leave her. Even in the most insane wanderings of mv mind, as it reeled and wavered under this awful blow', I could not be persuaded to leave the presence of the dead—my dead. Ar.dupon my urgent prayer, before the coffin was brought which was to shut her forever from my sight, I was left alone with the corpse. Edna lay before me, smiling in placid beauty—not pale, not white, but her face still roseate, as if with the vital current; and yet how cold! Death —gracious heaven! was this, could it be, death? Death—vliv and wherefore? What was the secret, mysterious cause which had worked her dissolution? I asked the question, and strove in vain to answer it, and then, with a bitter smile, confessed all my study and labor to have been useless. It mattered little that I was called great among men —that I had met and conquered disease in every shape and form. “What matters it.” I said, in the bitterness of my agony, “when this dear, dead one lies before me, in whom all my life and love was centered, and I unable to save her—nay, even to tell why she is not now, upon this bridal day, uniting her vows with mine?” She had lain thus for almost three days, cold and dead; yet my heart demanded the test which should remove all doubt, and I applied it. In vain! not a drop of blood followed the stroke of the lancet; and witn one last, long kiss, I bade farewell to all that remained of my beloved Edna before the coffin-lid closed over her. IV. The funeral was at last over, and the crowd that had attended it had dispersed. It was a dream to me; I knew nothing and heard nothing of the service, or of aught that was passing around me, save the mournful “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,”

as the coffin was shat from my view. | i'n*mdg gathered around me, as they had daring the two days past, with expression* of sympathy and condolence; but I made no answer—l was mate, and lost to every - ; thing save a sense of my great bereavement And some, I doubt not, marveled at my seeming indifference, where they had expected to see an outpouring of distracted grief. They had not looked down into the depths of my heart—they had not seen it, broken, crashed and shattered as i it was. A number of friends accompanied me heme, where they wished to remain awhile j to solace the hoars of my loneliness; but when they came to understand t:mt I wished to be left alone they respected my feelings I and left, one by one, until the lastone had gone. The hours of the afternoon had I passed away unconsciously, and when I l found myssif alone darkness had superj vened. Darkness without, not within; for one of my friends had thoughtfully lighted the argand lamp, and its clear, strong light now Hooded over my study—for it was to it that I had retired—disclosing every object with singular minuteness. I was lying on my back upon the sofa, trying to obtain a moment’s cessation from the acute agony of my thoughts, by allowing my eyes to rest successively upon every object in the range of my vision. First I looked at the table, littered over with books and papers, upon one of which I could distinguish the name of “Edna” in my handwriting. I closed my eyes with a shudder; all things visible—all sights and sounds—seemed to remind me of her. Reopening them, they fell upon my book-shelves, where the quaint old medical treatises that I loved to study now quietly reposed. Rising, from an idle impulse, I took one by chance from its place, and, sitting by the table, carelessly turned over its musty leaves. And it was by the merest chance, without the shadow of an intention, that my eyes rested upon the following passage, expressed in the primitive style of some of the earlier writers of the language: “But it was at Berlin, in the year of grace 1295, that tho most singular instance of this notable kind of thing did occur. It was there that a woman of health and strength the most sound, did of a sudden fall in a fit, the which was so belike unto death, that all did suspect naught otherwise, and did bury the same, with goodly Christian rites as became them to do. And this of all innocency; for they could not know what was afterward revealed, that this poor soul was alive at her burial, and did unwillingly suffer the same, and the death with which God did thereafter, in the ground, mercifully deliver her—she being dumb, and of no motion.” The book dropped from my hand as I read, and I started to my feet, the cold perspiration bursting forth from every pore. One horrible, ruling thought was busy at my brain, planted there by what demon I knew not. Was it not possible that such was the condition of her I had that day buried? Horror of horrors—impossible—improbable! The thought, the fancy, tho bare supposition of such a fact was fearful in the extreme; and yet, when I fearfully probed it to its source, I was startled, electrified, to discover that it proceeded no more from the chance reading of the passage I have quoted, than from a consciousness of its entire possibility! Circumstances connected with the supposed decease of Edna, with its mystery, with those tell-tale symptoms of languor to which I have averted, now came surging upon my mind, carrying with them almost the force of conviction! The thought staggered and stupefied me, until, with the revulsion, I sprang up, fully resolved to act upon tho doubt thus strangely suggested to me, and at least to satisfy myself of its utter falsity. Hatless and distracted, I secretly left the house, and, procuring a lantern, I moved cautiously toward the cemetery. The moon shone with splendor in an unclouded heaven, as I stole my way among the columns of tho old cathedral that held the family vaults. Entering the solemn rethe dead, I soon found the sarcophagus containing the remains of my "beloved, and hnstened to tear away the lids that concealed her from my sight. Frantic thoughts impelled my nervous arms—thoughts that each moment might jeopardize her safety, and that I should find her alive, and exultinglv snatch her from her place of horrors. Almost crazed with my emotions, I toiled energetically, until, at last, opening the coffin, I sank down beside it, weak and powerless. What was the revelation I was about to make? Was it replete with joy, or with misery? Murmuring a prayer for strength to bear that revelation, be it what it might, I arose to my feet, and, holding my lantern over the coffin, I gazed upon the features of my Edna. • Merciful God, what a sight was thnt which there greeted my horror-dilated eyes! That brief prayer was surely heard, or 1 should have never left that piaco of tombs alive. Bv the faint light of the lantern. 1 saw the corpse of Edn i within the coffin, turned over upon one side, the hands clutching the shroud, which enveloped (he form, with ihe tena ions grasp of death and despair; and the face distorted with a fearful convulsion, which plainly told of perfect consciousness of the dark doom which had now surely visited the unhappy sleeper! V. I turn with unmitigated loathing from tho books which I once studied with pleasure and profit; I lend a deaf ear to the entreaties from the world with ut, which reach me here in my loneliness, to come forth from my retirement and re-enact the part which lent such a luster to my youth. I have come to regard my bereavement us a punishment of the vainglorious pride of heart with which I formerly regarded my achievements in my pro ession, while from my heart goes up incessantly the mockiug.’despairing cry, “Thou wast great, thou wast learned, and yet she died!”

The Cunning of an Otter.

In the Zoological Gardens there is an otter that had a couple o; young ones. One day these young ones got into the pond and were quite unable to climb up its perpendicular sides. The mother appeared anxious to get them out, and made several useless attempts to reaeh them from this side of the pond. She then plunged into the "water, and, after playing with one of them for a short time, she pi\t her head close to its ear, as if to make it understand her intention, and then sprang out of the pond, while the young one clung tigbtijr by its teeth to her tail. And then, having landed it, she forthwith rescued the other one in the same manner. —London Globe.

HUMOR.

Key to poor house —Whisky. The most popular trade mark High and dry—A tall Kentuckian. An envelope is like a woman. It can’t go anywhere withont address. An hour glass is made smallest in the middle. It shows the waist? of time. “Business before pleasure,” as the man said when he kissed his wife before going to the club. A poet says; “i listen for the coming of his feet.” We suspect the girl’s father doesn’t tackle to him kindly. “Dear, dear, how fashions do alter, to be sure," remarked old Mrs. Peachblossom. “I see that steerage rates are cut lower.” —New York Journal. Senator Edmunds breathed on the side hill on his Vermont farm and the people in the neighborhood are using it for a toboggan slide.— New Hacen News. It appears to us that the woman’s heart kept in alcohol in Philadelphia isn’t much of a curiosity. We have no doubt several women have hearts.— The Judge. A Pennsylvania man has been granted a patent for an improved umbrella. It rings a chestnut bell when any one attempts to take it by mistake. —Burlington Fre ? Press. Why does a young man embracing his girl at the garden gate, just as the old man approaches, remind you of a love scene at the theater ? Because he is hugging his girl before the foot light?. At the opera: “I can’t explain the success of that singer.” “Neither can * L” “She sings through her nose most atrociously. ” “Perhaps that is the reason why every one is waving a handkerchief at her.” —Fren h Fun. Omaha teacher—What is the great distinction between men and animals ? Bright girl—Men can talk and animals can’t. “That is not sufficient, though, because scientists now assert that monkeys can talk. ” “O yes, of course; so can dudes.”— Omaha World. Bobby came into the house sobbing, and told his mother that Tommy White had kicked him. “Well, Tommy White is a very bad boy,” said Bobby’s mother, giving him a large piece of cake. “You didn’t kick him back, did you?” “No,” replied Bobby, between bites, “I kicked Him first. ” Milkman—“ Johnny, did you put water in the new milk this morning?” New assistant—“ Yes, sir.” “Don’t you know that it is wicked, Johnny ?” “But you told me to mix water with the milk.” “Yes, but I told you to put the water in first and pour the milk into it. Then, you see, we can tell people we never put water in the milk.” DIFFICULT TO SUIT. I do not like a man that’s tall; A man that’s snort is worse th m all, I much abhor a man that’s fat; A man that s lean is worse than that. A young man is a constant pest; An old one would my room infest. Nor do I like a man that’s fair; A man that’s black I cannot bea*. A man of sense I could not rule ; And yet I would not wed a fool. A sober man I would not take ; A drunken man my heart would break. All these I most sincertt/ hate, And yet I love the marriage state. — Old Scrap Book.

Gettysburg and the Franco-Prussian War.

During the Franco-Prussian war I kept a map of the field 'of operations with colored peg 3, that were moved from day to day to indicate the movements of the two armies. Eazine had been driven to shelter at Metz. McMahon had been driven back to the route leading from Paris to Metz and seemed in doubt whether he would go to Paris or to Eazaine’s relief. He suffered himself to be forced north of the route between these points. On the morning that the wires brought us that information, two or three of the French creoles of New Orleans visited my office to inquire my views of the movements then proceeding. I replied, “McMahon’s army will of war in ten days. ” They wero very indignant and stated that I was a republican and in sympathy with the Prussians. My reply was that I had only given them my solution of a military problem. The Prussians were on the shorter route to Paris or to Metz, so that if McMahon should attempt to move in either direction the Prussians, availing themselves of the shorter lines, would interpose and force McMahon to attack, but he had already been so beaten and demoralized that he could not be expected to make a successful attack, and would therefore be obliged to surrender. If he had gone directly to Paris before giving up his shorter route, it is possible that he could have organizing a succoring army for the relief of Metz. Had we interposed between Meade and Washington our army, in almost as successful prestige as was that of the Prussians, Meade would have been obliged to atta :k us wherever we might be pleased to have him. He would have been badly beaten like the I rench, and the result would have been similar. I do not mean to say that two governments would have been permanently established; for I thought before the war, and during its continuance, that the peoples would eventually get together again in stronger bonds of friendship than those of their first love. — Gen. Longstreet, in the Century. Several cases of physical and mental-. wreck are reported as the result of using the new anaesthetic, cocaine, in excess. Confirmed insanity has been produced by less than two years’ indulgence, and the moral nature, as in the case of the opium habit, is very speedily undermined.