circumstances of life, to "speak up like a ma-a-n!" And then we had a fiddler who could play under a chair, and over a chair, and through a chair, and on his head, and with his head between his legs, and under all circumstances of contortion under which a man could reasonably be expected to play a fiddle. The fiddler was followed by two Bounding Brothers, who, at first, were so mutually polite (as they bounded about the stage) that you would think they had only been introduced to each other; but when (in the course of the performance) they came to know one another better, you found that the elder brother was haughty, for he repelled the ingenious advances of the younger brother by turning him head over heels in the air. But the younger brother's fraternal love was too strong to be at all affected by these repulses, although as often as he ran up to embrace the elder brother, he was turned about by his unnatural relative in a most distressing manner. Eventually the elder brother began to lose his temper, and seizing the younger brother by the middle, twirled him violently round and round, and eventually threw him over his head, standing over him (as he came down) in a threatening attitude which there was no mistaking. The younger brother, who began to feel that matters were getting desperate, fell on his knees and prayed. The elder brother was softened, relented, clasped the younger brother in his arms, and the two went off, over each other's heads, in a burst of fraternal ecstasy.
A depressed and faded middle-aged lady, dressed in a scanty black silk dress, with a small arrangement of
