PHYSIOGNOMIC CURIOSITIES. 69 



him a quarter of an hour to finish his smoke, and he sat motionless as 

 a statue ; hut, when one of the soldiers went to remind him that his 

 time was up, they found that the fifteen minutes and the old chief had 

 expired together. James Nisbet, in his " Annals of California," relates 

 that in the fall of 1851, when Lynch-justice was the only law of the Ter- 

 ritory, a multitude of citizens assembled on the Plaza of San Francisco, 

 to hang a notorious rascal, who had amassed money by burglary, but 

 was at last caught in flagrante. Mr. Nisbet made his way through 

 the crowd, and seeing a gentleman standing a little apart, calmly smok- 

 ing a cigarette, he went up to him and inquired if he could tell him 

 who it was they were going to hang. The man thus addressed re- 

 moved the ashes from his cigarette, and with great politeness replied, 

 " Unless I'm quite mistaken, it's me, sir," and then resumed his smoke. 

 " Ten minutes after," says Mi*. Nisbet, " the same gentleman was 

 dangling by his neck from a balcony of the Pacific Hotel." 



During the first war of the Carlists and Cristinos an attempt was 

 made to assassinate the Count de Santa Cruz, who commanded the city 

 of Barcelona, by blowing up an old stone chapel where he used to 

 transact his official business. A desperado undertook the job, and, 

 after planting his powder and lighting the match, he went to the 

 count's hotel, engaged him in conversation, and under pretext of 

 some official business started him toward the loaded chapel. Once 

 there, he calculated, the count would stay an hour or so, and he could 

 slip out before the explosion. But, just as they entered the inclosure 

 of the chapel, the building went up with an earth-shaking crash, and 

 the would-be assassin, though unhurt, stood trembling and pale as 

 death. Santa Cruz readjusted his hat, which had been knocked side- 

 ways by a flying fragment, and, turning to his companion, very quietly 

 observed: "You always ought to wet a slow match in such hot 

 weather, companero ; otherwise they burn double-quick, and the thing 

 goes off prematurely." 



It is to men of this class that Lavater refers, when he speaks of 

 individuals who have such a conti'ol over their features that they pre- 

 vent even violent passions from impressing them with the marks they 

 would leave on other faces. As to the question what vices can be de- 

 tected by the expression of the countenance, opinions differ very widely. 

 Physical excesses always leave their mark, and there is no doubt that 

 an expert physician can recognize a drunkard, a debauchee, a glutton, 

 or an opium-eater without any difficulty, and even without confound- 

 ing the effects of their different vices. But, though phrenologists 

 assert, and every lover of justice should wish, it to be otherwise, over- 

 whelming evidence obliges one to admit that, as a rule, moral turpitude 

 leaves no such traces. If free from health-destroying habits, a plot- 

 ting fiend may disarm suspicion with the ideal forms and soft eyes of 

 Guido's dream-children, and the recoi'ds of history not less than those 

 of every-day life abound with instances of such masked scoundrels. 



