A STORY OF HAUNTING HORROR. 87
" Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I
made in those heartless rhymes. They have ridden
me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after
hour, to this very moment. Since I saw you I
have suffered the torments of the lost. Saturday
evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and took
the night train for Boston. The occasion was the
death of a valued old friend who had requested
that I should preach his funeral sermon. I took
my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the
discourse. But I never got beyond the opening
paragraph; for then the train started, and the
car-wheels began their ' clack-clack-clack-clack !
clack-clack-clack-clack!' and right away those
odious rhymes fitted themselves to that accompani¬
ment. For an hour I sat there and set a syllable
of those rhymes to every separate and distinct
clack the car-wheels made. Why, I was as fagged
out, then, as if I had been chopping wood all day.
My skull was splitting with headache. It seemed
to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer;
so I undressed and went to bed. I stretched myself
out in my berth, and—well, you know what the
result was. The thing went right along, just the
same. 'Clack-clack-clack, a blue trip slip, clack-
clack-clack, for an eight-cent fare; clack-clack-clack,
a buff trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for a six-cent
fare, and so on, and so on, and so on—ptmch in the
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