Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 13 October 1887.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 4).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: For the initials ‘S.T.’ see the headnote to ‘The Hill of Illusion’.

Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iii, 1615–17.

In himself, Penhelder was not striking. His worst enemies did not call him ugly, nor his best friends handsome. But friends and enemies alike were interested in his Fate, which was unique. When he was three years old, he interrupted some mowing operations with a pair of chubby mottled legs and bled, as his nurse said at the time, “all round the hayfield in quarts.” In his sixth year, he started on a voyage across the horse-pond; his galley being a crank hurdle, which, in mid-ocean, turned turtle, and but for the pig-killer, who happened to pass that way, he would certainly have been drowned. At nine years of age, he sat upon a wall like Humpty- Dumpty – a high wall meant to protect an apple-orchard – and, like Humpty-Dumpty, fell; fracturing his collar-bone. About this time, his family noticed the peculiarity of his fate and commented upon it. Three years later, being at a public school, Penhelder dropped from the trapeze of the gymnasium and broke one of the small bones of his leg. It was then discovered that every one of his previous accidents had occurred between the months of May and June. Penhelder was apprized of this and bidden to behave more seemly in future. His conduct was without flaw or reproach till his fifteenth year, when the school dormitories caught fire, and Penhelder, escaping in his night gown, was severely burnt on the back and legs. He enjoyed the honour of being the only boy who had been touched by the flames. This saddened him and his family, but more especially his old nurse, who maintained that “her boy,” as she lovingly called Penhelder, was “cast” – a provincialism for bewitched.