Lulu a Tale of the National Hotel Poisoning

dy become, that the guests left the hotel in terron, and the house was closed. When tho President elect came to this hotel, a few weeks previous to the Inauguration, he aud many others were taken suddenly ill. He tnen went away, and no new cases of this unaccountable disease occurred until he returned again to thie hotel, a day or two before the 4th of March, to await his inauguration. Then very many of the gucsts of this house were attacked again. Some died others were injured for life but most finally recovered. The coincidence of the Presidents distinct visits to this house with the two outbreakings of this frightful sickness, occasioned a widely-circulated rumor that an effort wlts being made by some mysterious unknown to poison him. A medical commission reported, as the result of their investigations, that this malady was occasioned by imperfect drainage undcr the house. An old physician, who was a guest of. the hotel, scouted this conclusion, and remarked, I am too old a practitfoner not to know the evidences of poison on the human system Doctor Le Vert, of Mobile, pronounced the patients who were under his care to be poisoned with arsenic. This opinion appears to bc strongly corroborated by the symptoms of the various sufferers, who presented all or most of the evidences of having taken arsenic, which are laid down as guides in Doctor Becks Medical Jurisprudence. The whole affair remains to this day a profound mystery but none who were the victims of this infernal plot will soon forget the torture 1 of mind and body it produced. The fictitious scenes which are woven about this catastrophe as a frame to prese e the fact in a manner for histoq, are respectfully submitted to the public by the CHAPTER I. DECLARATION OF WAR I PURPOSE to introduce to you, gentle reader, in the ensuing pages, some of the living characters of onr nation. If your kindne sw ill permit you to follow my tortuous narrative to the end, I promise you to blend in - strange if not amusing medley, statesmen and jurists, ladies and politicians of our time, with a few of our substantial merchant princes and our worthy sons of toil. Permit me then to nse a writers privilege and introduce a charming lady first. . ... She sat quietly at a window of an old mansion dn the southern bank of the beautiful Uohawk, and the last . rays of an October sun feil gently upon her skeet face and her tall, graceful figure. The window where she s s t . looked forth upon the broad bosom of the noble riveraliik and heaving from the wild dash of the glittering falls, wliich just above the mansion on the left, broke the quiet flow of the waters. Beneath her, at the left, sounded the busy hum of spindles and the plash of water-wheels, paking discordant music to the beautiful C picture of the setting sun and the bright river before . her...