What more ingenious "way out" has ever been devised than that of Poe in "The Pit and the Pend-num," in which the prisoner, bound beneath the great blade which at every swing swept nearer to his heart, rubbed his ropes with the greasy viands from his platter, and was set free by the swarms ut gnawing rats? But our old friend Sherlock Holmes is admirable, too—as when, for example, he escaped from another cell by knocking over the warders' lantern, setting his cigar on the window ledge, where it remained glowing in the darkness if still in his own mouth, stole out of the door with his girl companion and shot the bolts upon his flabbergasted guards.
Had Shakespeare ever set himself to write a "thriller" he would doubtless have surpassed them all. What mortal was ever in a tighter place than Antonio when Shylock, whetting his knife upon his boot-sole, stood.grovelling for his pound of flesh; or whoever escaped with greater ingenuity—though not his own—when Portia sprang her stage-surprise about the drop of Christian blood? Even we, who know it all by heart, still find it thrilling. What, then, must have been its obscure necessities and masked|the spectators had no inkling of long thoughts; none will deny him! effect on the "first night," when
what was to come? phenomena.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.