CURIOUS AMERICAN STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume V, Issue 1517, 5 October 1868, Page 4

CURIOUS AMERICAN STORY.

The American papers have set afloat a tale, which for violent improbability exceeds, all the inventions of sensational writers; yet its truth is maintained, and the incidents relates, is is said, arise from tho basis of a forthcoming trial. Two friends, one a clergyman, the other a tailor—strange intimacy between tho cloth and its cutter—fall out, aud turn to hitter enemies. They part, and live sundered by miles, tho clergyman's parting words to his quondam friend being to the effect that be hop<W, in the lapse of a year, he might see him dead, and rejoice over: his corpse, Exaotly a year runs out, and to the day comes a communication to the vindictive clergyman, informing him that his bitter wish was accomplished. The tailor was dead. Away starts the minister to gloat ever tho visible fact. He reaohos tho house of death, finds the widow weeping besides the coffin, which he wants to open, that ha may vent his exultation over the poor cold remains of his foo. While he is insisting on this brutal satisfaction, tho lid of the coffin rises, the pall is throw aside, the tailor, in tho enjoyment of every function and faculty of life, assails tho clergyman and kills him on the spot. He is th.-n huddled into tho coffin in the place of the supposed defunct, and finally buried in his stead. The tailor had to wunder away from the scene of.thin.act of retribution, but was soon after recognised, and is now to bo put on his trial for the murder. Such strange dep.. s have from time to time, come to light, engendered out of the singular social condition and personal character Of our American cousins, that there is just a bare possibility this strange story may hayo a foundation of truth 1 . lam reminded by it of a Russian storyT road somewhere, of a murder, at first supposed to have been committed by a dead man. It related that; according to : a Russian custom, when anyone dies, the body of tho deceased, on the day previ ug to interment, is brought to a ohurch, where a priost passes the night in prayer for the dnad man's soul. The priost in this instance was accompanied by a chorister, and was in the aot of repeating the usual orisons, when, to his intense surprise, he beheld tho body rise from its coffin and advance towards him. ■Rushing to tho front, he sprinkled the dead man with holy water, adding all the, formula) of exorcism he was acquainted with, but in vaio. ; The corpse soized the priest, threw him on the ground, and in tho end slew him—a task already half done to his hand, no doubt, by sheer fright. Having given itself this satisfaction, the body again quietly resumed its place in the coffin, Bnd the young chorister, who had witnessed tho whole scone from behind a pillar, whither he had retreated, stole away to recount this extraordinary instance of post-mortem ferocity. For a long tin:o the affair remained an inexplicable mystery, when a molefactor, about to suffor for his misdeeds, making a clean breast of all his crimes, confessed that, having a grudge against the priest, he had church unseen, and taken the place of the corpse,"dressing himself in its garments, "rlaving dispatched his enemy he reinstated the body in its former position and left the church aa he had entered it.— Once a Week,

A' Con job. Maok.o»qokib.—When.does.. a noniritnaliit losehia temper P—W hen he getsiacensed!