I saw nothing in it
      of an extraordinary character, but its effect upon Bedloe was
      prodigious. He nearly fainted as he gazed. And yet it was but a
      miniature portrait—a miraculously accurate one, to be sure—of his
      own very remarkable features. At least this was my thought as I
      regarded it. “You will perceive,” said Templeton, “the date of this picture—it
      is here, scarcely visible, in this corner—1780. In this year was
      the portrait taken. It is the likeness of a dead friend—a Mr.
      Oldeb—to whom I became much attached at Calcutta, during the
      administration of Warren Hastings. I was then only twenty years
      old. When I first saw you, Mr. Bedloe, at Saratoga, it was the
      miraculous similarity which existed between yourself and the
      painting which induced me to accost you, to seek your friendship,
      and to bring about those arrangements which resulted in my
      becoming your constant companion. In accomplishing this point, I
      was urged partly, and perhaps principally, by a regretful memory
      of the deceased, but also, in part, by an uneasy, and not
      altogether horrorless curiosity respecting yourself. “In your detail of the vision which presented itself to you amid
      the hills, you have described, with the minutest accuracy, the
      Indian city of Benares, upon the Holy River. The riots, the
      combat, the massacre, were the actual events of the insurrection
      of Cheyte Sing, which took place in 1780, when Hastings was put
      in imminent peril of his life. The man escaping by the string of
      turbans was Cheyte Sing himself. The party in the kiosk were
      sepoys and British officers, headed by Hastings. Of this party I
      was one, and did all I could to prevent the rash and fatal sally
      of the officer who fell, in the crowded alleys, by the poisoned
      arrow of a Bengalee. That officer was my dearest friend. It was
      Oldeb. You will perceive by these manuscripts,” (here the speaker
      produced a note-book in which several pages appeared to have been
      freshly written,) “that at the very period in which you fancied
      these things amid the hills, I was engaged in detailing them upon
      paper here at home.”

      In about a week after this conversation, the following paragraphs
      appeared in a Charlottesville paper:

      “We have the painful duty of announcing the death of Mr. Augustus
      Bedlo, a gentleman whose amiable manners and many virtues have
      long endeared him to the citizens of Charlottesville. “Mr. B., for some years past, has been subject to neuralgia,
      which has often threatened to terminate fatally; but this can be
      regarded only as the mediate cause of his decease. The proximate
      cause was one of especial singularity. In an excursion to the
      Ragged Mountains, a few days since, a slight cold and fever were
      contracted, attended with great determination of blood to the
      head. To relieve this, Dr. Templeton resorted to topical
      bleeding. Leeches were applied to the temples. In a fearfully
      brief period the patient died, when it appeared that in the jar
      containing the leeches, had been introduced, by accident, one of
      the venomous vermicular sangsues which are now and then found in
      the neighboring ponds. This creature fastened itself upon a small
      artery in the right temple. Its close resemblance to the
      medicinal leech caused the mistake to be overlooked until too
      late. “N. B.—The poisonous sangsue of Charlottesville may always be
      distinguished from the medicinal leech by its blackness, and
      especially by its writhing or vermicular motions, which very
      nearly resemble those of a snake.”

      I was speaking with the editor of the paper in question, upon the
      topic of this remarkable accident, when it occurred to me to ask
      how it happened that the name of the deceased had been given as
      Bedlo. “I presume,” I said, “you have authority for this spelling, but I
      have always supposed the name to be written with an e at the
      end.”

      “Authority?—no,” he replied. “It is a mere typographical error. The name is Bedlo with an e, all the world over, and I never knew
      it to be spelt otherwise in my life.”

      “Then,” said I mutteringly, as I turned upon my heel, “then
      indeed has it come to pass that one truth is stranger than any
      fiction—for Bedloe, without the e, what is it but Oldeb
      conversed! And this man tells me that it is a typographical
      error.”




THE SPECTACLES


      Many years ago, it was the fashion to ridicule the idea of “love
      at first sight;” but those who think, not less than those who
      feel deeply, have always advocated its existence. Modern
      discoveries, indeed, in what may be termed ethical magnetism or
      magnetoesthetics, render it probable that the most natural, and,
      consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections
      are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy—in
      a word, that the brightest and most enduring of the psychal
      fetters are those which are riveted by a glance. The confession I
      am about to make will add another to the already almost
      innumerable instances of the truth of the position. My story requires that I should be somewhat minute. I am still a
      very young man—not yet twenty-two years of age. My name, at
      present, is a very usual and rather plebeian one—Simpson. I say
      “at present;” for it is only lately that I have been so
      called—having legislatively adopted this surname within the last
      year in order to receive a large inheritance left me by a distant
      male relative, Adolphus Simpson, Esq. The bequest was conditioned
      upon my taking the name of the testator,—the family, not the
      Christian name; my Christian name is Napoleon Bonaparte—or, more
      properly, these are my first and middle appellations. I assumed the name, Simpson, with some reluctance, as in my true
      patronym, Froissart, I felt a very pardonable pride—believing
      that I could trace a descent from the immortal author of the
      “Chronicles.” While on the subject of names, by the bye, I may
      mention a singular coincidence of sound attending the names of
      some of my immediate predecessors. My father was a Monsieur
      Froissart, of Paris. His wife—my mother, whom he married at
      fifteen—was a Mademoiselle Croissart, eldest daughter of
      Croissart the banker, whose wife, again, being only sixteen when
      married, was the eldest daughter of one Victor Voissart. Monsieur
      Voissart, very singularly, had married a lady of similar name—a
      Mademoiselle Moissart. She, too, was quite a child when married;
      and her mother, also, Madame Moissart, was only fourteen when led
      to the altar.