part I play at the Lara, or Eslava, or Apolo. Anyhow, at the box-office

they take me for an actor. The actors think that I am a played-out actor; and meanwhile, there I am, at my ease with my provincial deputy, determined that they shall put his farce, or review, or whatever you may call it, on the stage.”

“Don’t you really know what it is?”

“No. He has tried to read it to me more than a hundred times, but up to the present I have parried the blow. We’ll see if I can continue to do so. Farewell, my saviors; my idea of committing suicide has now evaporated. Thanks!

“‘To-day the heavens and earth on me do smile, To-day the sun reaches to my inmost heart. To-day you gave me chops, two chops! So, to-day, I in Providence do trust.’”

As he declaimed this, little Dumas held out to us his dirty, greasy hands, and went away.

“There you have romanticism,” murmured Luis, disdainfully, shrugging his shoulders. “What a pity that he and all the rest like him couldn’t have a course of lectures on _common-senseology_!”