hushed while the soul lives.  He ceased to perform the sacred functions of his office, making some plausible pretext to his superiors, not daring to add sacrilege to mortal sin.  Shutting himself in his chamber, he brooded over his crime; or, no longer able to endure the agony he felt, he would rush forth, and walk for hours over the sand-dunes, or along the sea-beach.  But no answer of peace followed his prayers, and the voices of nature soothed him not.  He thought his sin unpardonable—­at least, he would not pardon himself.  He was found one morning lying dead in his bed in a pool of blood.  He had severed the jugular-vein with a razor, which was still clutched in his stiffened fingers.  His handsome and classic face bore no trace of pain.  A sealed letter, lying on the table, contained his confession and his farewell.

Among the lawyers in one of the largest mining towns of California was H. B—.  He was a native of Virginia, and an alumnus of its noble University.  He was a scholar, a fine lawyer, handsome and manly in person and bearing, and had the gift of popularity.  Though the youngest lawyer in the town, he took a front place at the bar at once.  Over the heads of several older aspirants, he was elected county judge.  There was no ebb in the tide of his general popularity, and he had qualities that won the warmest regard of his inner circle of special friends.  But in this case, as in many others, success had its danger.  Hard drinking was the rule in those days.  Horace B—­had been one of the rare exceptions.  There was a reason for this extra prudence.  He had that peculiar susceptibility to alcoholic excitement which has been the ruin of so many gifted and noble men.  He knew his weakness, and it is strange that he did not continue to guard against the danger that he so well understood.  Strange?  No; this infatuation is so common in everyday life that we cannot call it strange.  There is some sort of fatal fascination that draws men with their eyes wide open into the very jaws of this hell of strong drink.  The most brilliant physician in San Francisco, in the prime of his magnificent young manhood, died of delirium tremens, the victim of a self-inflicted disease, whose horrors no one knew or could picture so well as himself.  Who says man is not a fallen, broken creature, and that there is not a devil at hand to tempt him?  This devil, under the guise of sociability, false pride, or moral cowardice, tempted Horace B—­, and he yielded.  Like tinder touched by flame, he blazed into drunkenness, and again and again the proud-spirited, manly, and cultured young lawyer and jurist was seen staggering along the streets, maudlin or mad with alcohol.  When he had slept off his madness, his humiliation was intense, and he walked the streets with pallid face and downcast eyes.  The coarser-grained men with whom he was thrown in contact had no conception of the mental tortures he suffered, and their rude jests stung him to the quick.