he landed, with yells and hootings, surrounding
the carriage like so many dusky demons, and
heaping all kinds of contumely on fallen royalty
until it gained the shelter of the Date-Tree Inn,
when the banished lords took a lodging
immediately opposite, and held a dignity ball that
night in token of derision and indignation.
Date-Tree Inn was the only place of refuge
which fallen royalty could find; for Mrs. Seacole's
sister, who keeps an hotel in Jamaica, where she
is tenderly patriotic in beefsteaks and porter,
would not so far demean herself or her house as to
give his sable majesty a refuge. He had been
emperor twelve years, but Mrs. Seacole's sister had
not learnt to believe in his regality for all that.

After Soulouque's fall and expulsion, Febre
Geffrard was chosen President: a kind, just
man, full of good intentions, and singularly
merciful in disposition, a pure African by blood,
but with all the upright feelings and noble
instincts of the most civilised Caucasian. But
Fabre Geffrard is not acceptable to the whole of
his quasi-subjects. A large section still regrets
the author of the Haïtian coup d'état, and this
section determined, the other day, to get rid of
Fabre and his gentle rule. A party of five,
composed chiefly of men of rank and condition,
and neaded by Zamors and Chochotti, two men
of birth, surrounded the President's house;
and, on his young daughter, Madame Blaufort,
appearing, a man named Sanon shot her down
as she stood, intending to seize the President in
the confusion, and make short work with him.
It was a ruthless assassination. Not many weeks
married, much and tenderly beloved, there was
everything, both in her character and condition,
that ought to have pleaded for her exemption
from harm. Yet she was the one marked out
for destruction, simply with the hope that her
death would create such consternation that the
plot could be carried into effect without trouble
or hindrance. It was a heinous crime; an
unpardonable crime, but the revenge taken was
severe enough even for the vengeful. Twenty
men were condemned to death, not all of whom
were guilty of even knowledge of the assassination.
Yet sixteen were actually executed, four
saving themselves by flight. Fabre Geffrard
could with difficulty be brought to consent to
this wholesale manner of retribution, but his
ministers and the army took the matter out of
his hands, and the trial was pressed forward
with all the ardour and passion of the South,
passing from accusation to conviction, and from
conviction to execution with very little interval
or respite in between.

The condemned bore themselves with the
courage of heroes. When drawn out to be
shot, they stood in a row, chatting gaily among
each other, and smoking as calmly as if on
parade—like all men who have committed a
great public crime, cheating themselves into the
belief that they had meditated a great public
virtue. The soldiers told off for the execution
were unmanned. Though there were forty-six
to do the work, it took three-quarters of an hour
before the last man was killed. It was a
perfect butchery, and the popular feeling, which
had been so strong on the side of the murdered
girl and against the conspirators, was all now
drawn to the victims of what seemed to be an
inhuman slaughter. It will be long before
Haïti forgets that day when she wetted her feet in
the blood of her sons, and trailed her royal
robes knee-deep through the crimson stain. It
might have been a just sentence, but at the best
it was not tempered with mercy, and, under all
the circumstances of the execution, even the
justice became problematical.

INFALLIBLE PHYSIC.

"THERE is always," observed an author two
centuries ago, "some one arch quackery that
carries the bell in England. If it is not tar
water, it is something else." It is calculated
that at least half a million of pounds sterling is
expended annually by the English public on
advertised drugs and nostrums. Upwards of
forty thousand pounds are paid annually to the
revenue for stamps on quack medicines. One
patent medicine-vendor, it is affirmed, spends
no less a sum than twenty thousand pounds
yearly in advertising his drugs.

One of the most notable impostors on public
credulity was St. John Long, a painter from
Cork, who took up doctoring on his own
authority. He settled in London, took a fine
house, and enunciated a mystic doctrine about
morbific matter. All his remedies were applied
externally, kept strictly secret, and vaunted as
the great discovery of the age. He soon got
abundance of patients, and it is said gained one
hundred thousand pounds out of the pockets of
the credulous public in London. Yet Dr. Sleigh,
an eminent physician to whom Long was
induced to apply for instruction after his first
trial for manslaughter, asserted that, even for
a layman and unprofessional man, he found him
utterly and strangely ignorant on everything
whatever, however elementary, relating to the
structure, functions, and diseases of the body.
Nevertheless, at his two trials numerous
witnesses, among whom were noblemen, clergymen,
and generals, stood forward to swear to his
great medical knowledge. One of these
witnesses (Lord Ingestre) swore that he saw St.
John Long draw several pounds of a liquid like
mercury from a patient's brain!

In the early part of the present century, a
person called Perkins sold in great numbers, and
at exorbitant prices, two small tapering pieces of
metal called Tractors, which were stated to be
perfectly efficacious in the removal of "acute
and chronic rheumatism, gout, sprains, erysipelas,
epileptic fits, pleurisy," and numerous
other ailments, and they were further alleged to
be equally successful in all analogous diseases
of horses or other animals. The small pieces of
metal were made of zinc and copper, which
would cost at the most but a few pence, yet they
were sold in great numbers at six guineas a set,
and persons of high repute and station bore
testimony to the truth of this "safe, speedy, and