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THE BARREL-ORGAN.

francs a month would not be equal to the task of "warming over" the remains of the roast beef of yesterday with potatoes and onions.

II

What mournful memories music brings up! How sad are the recollections of other days that it evokes! And how the tears rise to our eyes in the gathering twilight of November at the wailing of the barrel-organ as it plays some long forgotten galop!

Of what are you thinking, Madame la Comtesse, as you listen to it, and why do you stand thus motionless at the lofty window of your boudoir, as if some mighty hand had fallen and smitten you into stone among your musings? Happy woman that you are, in all the plenitude of your beauty of thirty years, say, what memories has it for you, that old galop that the wailing, groaning organ, compeller of dreams, is playing down there upon the bleak boulevard, behind the naked lindens of your garden?

It recalls to you the great amphitheater of "Johnson's American Circus," with its fringe of intently gazing faces, as it used to be in the days of your equestrian triumphs. The two negro minstrels have brought their comic concert to an abrupt end by smashing their violins over each other's head and the groom has brought your trick-horse out upon the saw-dust track—you remember him, the huge, gentle white horse, spotted with black, who used to remind one of a raw turkey dressed and stuffed with truffles? Then you make your entrée, hand in hand with the ring-master, a resplendent being in scarlet coat and hair à