f RILEY— NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT. " 157 



tpmbstone when he is delivering a particiiiarly exasperating joke. One night a 

 negro woman was burned to death in a house next door to us, and Riley said that 

 our landlady would be oppressively emotional at brCakfas't, because she generally 

 made use of such opportunities as offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, 

 and 'so we should find it best to let her talk along and. say nothing back — it was the 

 only way to keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral 

 in the neighborhood but that the gravy wis watery for a week. 



And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs of woe 

 —entirely broken-hearted. Everything she looked at reminded her of that poor 

 old negro woman, aii<i so the buckwheat ckkes made her sob, the coffee forced a, 

 groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail that made our hair rise; 

 Then she got to talking about deceased, and kept up a steady drizzle till both of 

 us we're soaked through and through. JPrespntly. she took a fresh breath and said, 

 with a world of sobs — 



" Ah, to think of it, only to think of it !^-tlie poor did faithful creature. For she 

 was so faithful. Would you believe it, she 'had, been a servant in that self-same 

 house and that self-same family for twenty-seven years come Christmas, and never 

 across word and never a lick! And, oh, t'o think she should meet such a death at 

 last !— ^a-sitting over the red-hot stdve at three o'clock in the morning and went to 

 sleep and fell on it and was actually roasted I, Not just frizzled up a bit, bull 

 literally roasted to a crisp ! Poor faithful creaturg, how she waj- cooked ! I am but} 

 a ppor.woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put lip a ^tombstone ovet 

 that lone sufferer's grave— and Mr. Riley if you woiild have the goodness to think 

 up a little epitaph to put on it which would sort of describe the awful way in which! 

 she met her" — j | 



" Put it, ' Well done, good and faithful seryartt,'" said Riley, and never smiled- I 



