suffer as he is making her! The clowns come in and make their jokes; old as the hills, no doubt, but to us exquisitely fresh, and we greet them with the hearty zest and admiration that no laughter, save that of childhood, ever knows. Presently something very dreadful happens; the hero of the piece (it is a grand piece, with robbers and horses and ladies and a splendid fight) who has been killed is being carried out, laid very straight and stiff on the shoulders of four men, with his eyes tightly shut, and the band is playing the Dead March in Saul very slowly and impressively, with a pause of several seconds between each note, when the music abruptly ceases, and with a discordant crash, musicians, instruments and all, vanish from our sight, and nothing is to be seen of them save a great dust that rises from their ruins. What has happened? The dead man is lowered to the ground, upon which he sits up and stares. We all gaze with fascinated and dilated eyes at the box from which the men have vanished. Are they killed? But sounds of wrath, of disgust and vituperation, mingled with a rattling of bones and brass instruments, speedily reassure us on that point, and before long the missing gentlemen creep out one by one, very red in the face and dusty in the throat, and take up their station on the benches, which may possibly be trusted not to serve them the dirty trick the box has done. Once settled, they take up the burden of their Dead March where they laid it down, the dead man carefully stretches himself out on his bearers' shoulders, and the piece is brought to a decent conclusion with "God save the Queen," to cover all deficiencies.
The sunshine makes our eyes blink as we emerge into it, and bend our steps towards the fat woman, to whom we must assuredly make our bow. The apartment in which that august lady receives us is out of all proportion to her charms, being in fact but a carevan upon wheels, across the hinder part of which is drawn a musty curtain, that we dimly imagine hides unsavoury sights
