CHAPTER VI.
On the eventful Thursday, when Ida attired herself in the blue silk, she quite fulfilled her little sister's expectations. The dress was made simply, but was so becoming that Aunt Patty and Cynthia were profuse in their expressions of admiration. But in spite of this—perhaps because of it—Ida felt no elation, and started off to the lawn party with a heavy heart. Mrs. Lennox had kindly sent a carriage for her, knowing that the only vehicle Aunt Patty possessed was a light uncovered wagon, and her only steed a heavy old horse used in the farm work.
"You are like a princess, going off in all this style," said Cynthia, as she accompanied her sister to the gate, near which the pair of black horses in their silver-mounted harness stood impatiently pawing the ground, "and I hope you'll have the grandest kind of a time."
Ida's only reply was a heavy sigh.
Cynthia looked at her sister, loving anxiety in her soft brown eyes. "Ida," she said, hesitatingly, "I'm afraid you're worrying about my not going to the lawn party. But you needn't, for I'm all over my disappointment now. And I expect to have a very nice time at home. Aunt Patty says I can make some sugar jumbles, and we've asked old Mrs. Hooper to tea."
Ida looked at her sister a moment, her face white and set, her dark eyes full of pain; then opening the gate, she stepped into the carriage, the footman closing the door with a slam. Another moment and the impatient horses had started off, leaving little Cinderella to gaze after the carriage until it disappeared around a bend in the road.
As was only natural, Ida soon forgot her troubles in her enjoyment of the pleasures of the lawn party, though she was much embarrassed when, on her arrival, Mrs. Lennox asked her why Cynthia had not accompanied her. She was saved, however, from the necessity of making any reply by the arrival of half a dozen guests at once, who immediately monopolized their hostess, and began the most enthusiastic praises of the beautiful decorations of the spacious grounds.
Ida, with a sense of relief, made her escape, and was at once seized upon by Angela Leverton, who took her off to the croquet-ground, where a game was already in progress. But in spite of all the distractions of the occasion, Ida's mind reverted to Cynthia again and again, and she felt a pang of remorse as she thought how ardently her little sister would have enjoyed everything, from the music of the city band to the frantic efforts of the special policeman, who was trying to keep the curious villagers from sitting like blackbirds on the low stone wall skirting the grounds.
Aunt Patty and Cynthia sat up to wait Ida's return, and listened with eagerness to her glowing account of the events of the day.
"I am so glad you had such a delightful time," Cynthia said, when at last she and Ida were on their way up stairs to their bedrooms, each carrying a lighted candle.
Ida paused a moment, looking down at her candle.
"I didn't deserve to have a good time," she rejoined, in a low voice; and then, as Cynthia only kissed her with a simple "Good-night," she sighed, and went into her room without further remark. One question from her sister, and she would have thrown her arms around her and confessed all.
[concluded in next number.]
[THROUGH A CANDY-FACTORY.]
BY BARNET PHILLIPS.
To begin at the beginning of a great candy and sugar-plum factory in New York, there was one trait shown by its founder which established its reputation. The man had the same characteristics as had Josiah Wedgwood. In England one hundred years ago pottery was a rude and incomplete business. Josiah Wedgwood made it one of the most classic and elegant of the plastic arts. When Wedgwood went through his vast Burslem work-shops, and noticed a piece of his ware—say a teapot—which was not up to the mark, he took a stick, and he simply smashed it.
There was once a baker who made cakes. Occasionally there would be a failure in his batch. The raising of the dough or the baking was defective. That baker never would sell these poor cakes to his customers. He might give them away. What he said was this, "These poor cakes are not a fair equivalent for good money." In time his business prospered because his cakes were the very best. Then he took to candy-making in a small way—only molasses-candy. But what he made was so super-fine that he could hardly meet the demand. Then he made other kinds of candy, with the same success. So his business grew and grew, until to-day this enterprise founded by this baker occupies a large building with many stories in New York, and the motive power for making chocolate, candy, and sugar-plums is a 300-horse steam-engine, and 350 people are employed.
To give some idea of the quantity of the prime material, sugar, used every day in the year in this establishment, the total mass may be fairly grasped at in this way: An acre of good ground in the West Indies produces twenty tons of sugar-cane; the sweet juice expressed from the cane represents some eighteen per cent. of this.
Before the sugar is turned out by evaporation the percentage of weight is notably diminished. It takes then about three-quarters of an acre of cane to supply this factory with the sugar necessary for its daily consumption. It is not only candy and sugar-plums which this concern makes, but chocolate in quantity, and sugar enters largely into the composition of this last substance.
From top to bottom the floors of the factory are covered with tiles, and I noticed that there were people engaged in all parts of the building scrubbing and washing these tiled floors. For a candy-factory it was the least sticky or smeary place I ever saw. Absolute cleanliness and sweetness was the rule. There was a slight drift of sugar about, as in a mill where wheat is being ground, and your coat might get a little powdered, but there always was sweeping going on.
Chocolate-making I need not describe, only to state that everything was done here by machinery, for the chocolate as produced enters for a large percentage into the bonbons manufactured.
SUGARED ALMONDS.
In the sugar-plum departments hand-work seemed to be constant. Tidy-looking young women, all with caps on, were working away, each one with a little saucepan before her full of sugar; the sugar was in a pasty condition, the heat being derived from steam. In these saucepans were colored sugars of all the lines of the rainbow. The work-women would take up an almond or a pistache-nut, and drop it in the saucepan, then fish it out with a bit of wire fashioned in loop form. The art was to get just the proper coating. Then with a dexterous motion of the wrist the sugar-plum would be placed in a tin pan, and with a deft motion of the wire loop a nice finish would be given to the top of it. There were some very small sugar-plums, and it would take two hundred of them to make a pound. They were all exact in form. These little things, so the foreman told me, had gone through ten processes before they had arrived at their present condition. Some of the sugar-plums were made in moulds. There was pure legerdemain about these. A man took a funnel, and dropped the sugar, just at the crystallizing point, in moulds. They were very small things, not more than an inch long by half an inch wide, but the confectioner never poured a drop in the wrong place. Dear me! if I tried to do that, I should make a precious mess of it.
Here were sugar-plums of many shades, every work-woman seeming to have a specialty. It was something not alone requiring alertness of hand, but constant watchfulness as to the condition of the material used. If it had been too soft, the bonbon would have run and been out of shape. If the sugar paste had been too hard, it would have been intractable. How they managed not to burn anything was a wonder.
Behind all this was the care necessary in the make-up of the first materials, and in the methods employed to give the colors and the flavors. Then there was the element of time, or a succession of processes. As soon as one batch of sugar-plums was finished, the saucepans had to be filled up again.
For the coloration of the sugar-plums many vegetable substances are used, and the utmost care was taken that nothing unwholesome should enter into the manufacture. Then it is, too, a nice question of flavors, for it is so easy to add too much of an essence and so spoil the bonbons. When the sugar-plum is made it must have powers of resistance. Sugar tends in some conditions to deliquescence, and so sugar-plums might all run together, and their appearance would be ruined.
WRAPPING CARAMELS.
There were some of the smaller candies which passed through rollers, whereby the crystallized sugar was shaped into squares or lozenges. In many of the rooms workmen were manipulating great masses of amber-colored melted sugar, turning and turning them on slabs of marble or iron. Here the skill was shown in getting the mass to exactly the proper temperature so that it could be worked. A hundred or more pounds of sweet stuff had to be of just such a consistency so as to shape it. If there had been a mistake, just as likely as not the whole batch would have been spoilt, for if heated over again its character would have been changed.
There was one room entirely devoted to nut-cracking. A nut, as a walnut or a pecan or a filbert, had to be cracked just so, and an old man tapped and tapped the nuts with the regularity of a machine. Then there was a corps of nut-pickers, who removed the shells and put aside the meats. Then there were several women who did nothing else but police these nuts, so as to remove the least possible fragment of shell. Just think of the horror of breaking a tooth while in the act of biting an inviting sugar-plum!
All day long almonds were being blanched. Almonds are too delicate to be passed through any machine, and so have to be slivered with a knife. Here were cocoanuts in quantity. They could be run through machines, and there were great heaps of ground cocoanut looking like snow. Figs form the basis of many sugar-plums, but these have to be all handled and picked before they are ground up.
Just think of not less than one hundred and fifty varieties of candies or sugar-plums, and you can appreciate how many differences there must be in the manufacture of these.
PACKING CHOCOLATE.
When the sugar-plums leave the workman's or work-woman's hands they are not yet ready for consumption. They must be nice enough when fresh, but they have to be hard enough or of such a consistency as to stand travel. If chocolate enters into their composition, they would be likely to run if preventive measures were not used. The chocolate bonbons have to be hardened in currents of cool air. If there is no chocolate, or if it is in small quantity, the sugar-plums are dried by heat, but not at a high temperature. Some sugar-plums are frosted, by means of crystallized sugar, then a rich syrup is put on them, and slow drying gives them a silvery appearance.
There is just as little touching of the sugar-plums as possible; not that the hands of the working-people are not clean, but to finger a bonbon before you help yourself to it is to take away something of its pretty bloom. I saw trays full of moulded chocolate bonbons, almond shaped, and some of them had a little rim of chocolate around them, which had exuded from the mould. A girl with a pair of gloves on was breaking off the excess of chocolate. Said the foreman: "Chocolate is so sensitive, that if the workwoman did not use gloves there would be thumb-marks, and a sugar-plum with a finger-mark on it is a spoilt sugar-plum. We have those gloves washed everyday."
In the make-up of the ordinary one-pound box of mixed sugar-plums there generally are some fifteen varieties. It would take a five-pound box, probably, to hold the one hundred and fifty different kinds this manufactory turns out.
In filling the boxes, some hundreds of empty ones are placed on a big table, and two or three women lay in the sugar-plums, one sort at a time in each box. Strange to say, you cannot hurry up this packing business. You cannot shoot sugar-plums into a box like coal into a bin. A bonbon refuses rough treatment. Be the least rude with a sugar-plum, and it is mashed. Gentle management does wonders with a great many things.
If the bonbons themselves are excellent, much of their saleability depends on the way they are put up. The utmost nicety is used in the construction of the box, with its frill of lace paper and the bit of silver or gold cord or the ribbon used in fastening it.
CREAM WALNUTS.
Some of the departments in this manufactory are noisy. Chocolate is a troublesome material, and it won't work well, save at certain temperatures. It has a decided disinclination to pack itself solid. A vast quantity of small tablets of chocolate are used. To make them the soft chocolate is placed in small tin moulds, and these are put on a rocking table, and the tins dance and rattle until the chocolate assumes the proper shape and consistency. Then sugared almonds in the act of manufacture make quite a racket. The almonds are surrounded with a sugar paste, and then put into revolving cylinders, and they roll and roll, making a sound like theatrical thunder.
The word bonbon is French, and really means "good-good." When we study early language, at the very beginning we find that primitive races had a way of reduplicating the same syllable, so it was a smart child who must have invented the word bonbon, which has about its equivalent in our "goodies."
You may rest satisfied that when you are lucky enough to get a box of these sugar-plums it is the result of an endless amount of painstaking labor and exceeding niceness, but it is questionable whether that will stop you for a moment in putting one of these pretty things into your mouth. Maybe when the very last sugar-plum is eaten you may think about the way they are made, and then you can ask for more, so as to be fully impressed with the cleverness of the bonbon art.
[SANTA CLAUS IN MOROCCO.]
BY HESTER CALDWELL OAKLEY.
Queer old Santa took the steamer
Over from Gibraltar,
Mounted on a donkey-pack,
With a rope for halter.
Thought he'd do his duty by
All the little Arabs,
Fill their stockings up with coins,
Bellyunes, and scarebs.
But his jolly old face fell
When he reached a village—
Tiny huts just thatched with straw,
One yard square for tillage.
All around he gazed aghast,
Then he said, "By Jim'ny!
What a savage, heathen place.
Not a single chimney!"
Gasped again, and paler grew,
Muttered, feebly: "Shocking!
'Mong these little Moorish kids
Not a blessed stocking!"
This Department is conducted in the interest of Amateur Photographers, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor Camera Club Department.
PAPERS FOR BEGINNERS, No. 16.
TRANSFERROTYPE BROMIDE PAPER.
Transferrotype paper is worked in the same way as bromide paper, the difference in the papers being that prints made on this paper may be transferred to glass, tiles, placques, lamp-shades, or made into transparencies and lantern-slides.
Expose the paper, develop and finish in the same way directed for bromide prints in last paper, taking care that no alum is allowed in any of the solutions, as that prevents the picture being transferred.
After the print is washed lay it face down on the object to which it is to be transferred, being particular that the surface is perfectly free from any grease or dust. Squeegee the wet print into perfect contact with the surface of the object, and see that no air blisters are left between the print and the face of the support. When it adheres perfectly, put over it a piece of blotting-paper, place a weight on it, and set away to dry. When it is thoroughly dry, pour nearly boiling water (180° Fahr.) on the back of the paper until it begins to blister, or until one corner can be lifted with the point of a penknife, when the paper can be pulled from the back of the picture. After the paper is removed, rub the surface of the picture with a tuft of surgeon's cotton dipped in warm water, as to remove any bits of paper that may be left on the transfer, and put away to dry in a place free from dust.
If the picture has been transferred to a lamp-shade, as soon as it is dry varnish it with a thin coat of dammar varnish, and heat in an ordinary oven for a few minutes, when the shade may be washed without injury to the picture.
Window-transparencies may be made with transferrotype paper, and if the print is transferred to opal glass it will make a much more brilliant picture than when made directly on the glass. For placques, tiles, etc., the paper may be bought in different sizes, according to the object for which it is designed. Small squares of heavy plate-glass ornamented with transferrotypes are pretty, and make timely Christmas gifts.
Sir Knight W. H. Tobey asks if animals could be included in the prizes offered for figure studies, as there are no prizes offered for animals this year, or if a picture of a boy and a dog would be called a figure study. He also asks if the pictures for different classes should be sent in separate packages, and how many figures may be introduced into a figure study. Picture of animals alone will not count in figure studies, but a boy and dog, a milkmaid and cow, a boy or girl with horse, etc., etc., would come under the head of figure studies. Pictures for different classes may all be sent in one package, but each picture must be marked with the name of the class to which it belongs. There in no limit to the number of figures in a figure study, but the larger the number of persons included the less chance of making a successful picture.
This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.
I heard a girl say the other day, and she frowned and looked quite cross, and puckered up her pretty face as she said it: "Dear me, I'm so nervous! I can't help fidgeting, and swinging my feet, and knocking over things when I'm tired, and I wish the children would keep still, and that Rob would not rattle the paper when he reads it. I hate to hear the rattling of paper. I'm just as nervous as a witch!"
Think of all this, from a girl fifteen years old. Why, her grandmother might have spoken in that way, and it wouldn't have been remarkable. But Dolly! I looked at her in surprise.
If there is anything among all the things you girls should cultivate, my dears, it is repose. Simply do not allow your feet to swing and your brows to pucker, but compel face and feet to mind your will, and will to be calm and tranquil on the outside if not beneath the surface. A result of this will be that the looking quiet, and moving gently, and holding yourself in control, will bring about a restful condition of mind. You will feel better and be less nervous if you put down the expression of nervousness.
Indigestion is at the bottom of half of our maladies. School-girls should eat plenty of good food at the right times, and should avoid too many sweets. Many a headache and fit of the blues can be traced back to a pound of candy, delicious candy, but too much for the stomach to manage. Bonbons and caramels and all such tempting confections should be eaten after a meal as dessert, not munched all day betweentimes.
One of the prettiest Christmas presents sent me last year was a box of home-made candies, sent by a dear girl friend who has great skill in this line. The candies were laid in a dainty birch-bark box lined with paraffine paper. This box was in its turn fitted tightly into a little silk-lined basket—rose-colored silk was used, and quilted into its folds was some violet-scented sachet powder. The whole was tied with a bow of rose-tinted satin ribbon, and on the very top, fastened down by the ribbon, was a lovely long-stemmed Jacqueminot rose. After the candies had disappeared I took the box for hair-pins and the basket to hold my spools and needle-book, and it still keeps the giver in my mind from day to day.
There is an old proverb which tells us that "All roads lead to Rome."
At this season "all roads lead to Christmas." Whatever else I begin to say, I end by finding myself talking about Christmas. It is so pleasant an occasion, so merry a day, that we think of and plan for it long before it comes, and remember it gladly long after it is gone. One of the most graceful things you can do, if you have not gifts to send, is to write to your friends, near and far, a Christmas letter. A letter never fails to give real pleasure to the one who receives it. There is even a beautiful charity called "The Christmas Letter Mission," which sends letters and cards and leaflets to people who are sick in hospitals, or shut up in prisons. You may not have time to send this sort of letter, but you can write to grandpapa, or Aunt Gertrude, or the girl you met and liked so well, last summer, at Bar Harbor or Put In Bay. If you can follow your letter in thought and hear the welcome word, "Ah! Jennie, dear child, has not forgotten me!" from grandpapa, or "Jennie's writing! Bless her heart!" from aunty, or, in fancy, see Elsie flying over the farm-house to find her mother, and have her share her pleasure, you will be repaid.
One more hint. Never put off writing a letter of thanks the very day you receive a gift. No matter how small the courtesy shown you, return it in a little graceful note.
In taking leave thank your entertainers for the pleasure they have given you, and as soon as you reach home write a note to your hostess again thanking her, and assuring her of your safe return.
[BOBBIE'S SUGGESTION.]
I've read an awful lot of tales
About those lovely folks,
The Brownies, and their funny ways,
Their jolly larks and jokes.
But now I sort of wish some one
Would take his pen and see
If he could not write something up
'Bout Blueys once for me.
Or possibly some man could write
Of Greenies and their tricks;
Of Pinkies, Reddies, Mauvies, or
Of all a lovely mix.
It isn't that I've ceased to love
The Brownies—they entrance—
But seems to me some other hue
Had ought to have a chance.
Gaston V. Drake.
[THE IMP OF THE TELEPHONE.]
BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
V.—THE CIRCUS.
The pictures that now followed one another across the canvas were better than any circus Jimmieboy ever went to, for the reason that it was entirely a water circus in which were the finest imaginable sea-monsters doing all sorts of marvellous things; and then, too, the book the Imp had turned on evidently had some reading matter in it, for as the pictures passed before the little fellow's eyes he could hear verses describing what was going on, repeating themselves from a shelf directly back of him.
First of all in the circus was the grand parade. A great big gilded band-wagon drawn by gayly caparisoned Sea-Horses went first, and then Jimmieboy could judge how much better electric circus books were than those he had in his nursery, for this book was able to do what his had never done—it furnished music to go with the band—and such music as it was! It had all the pleasant features of the hand-organ; was as soft and sweet in parts as the music-box in the white-and-gold parlor, and once in a while would play deliciously out of tune like a real circus band. After the band-wagon there followed the most amusing things that Jimmieboy ever saw, the Trick Oysters, twelve in number, and all on foot. Next came the mounted Scallops, riding ten abreast on superbly groomed Turtles, holding the bridle of each of which walked Lobsters dressed as Clowns. Then came the menagerie, with great Sea-Lions swimming in tanks on wheels; marine Giraffes standing up to their necks in water forty feet deep; four-legged Whales, like the Oysters, on foot, and hundreds of other queer fish, all doing things Jimmieboy had never supposed they could do.
When the parade was over a great circus ring showed itself upon the canvas, and as strains of lovely music came from the left of the tent the book on the shelf began to recite:
"The Codfish walks around,
The Bass begins to sing;
The Whitebait 'round the Terrapin's cage
Would better get out of the ring.
The Gudgeon is the fish
That goes to all the shows,
He swims up to the Teredos
And tweaks him by the nose."
"That Gudgeon must have been a sort of Van Amberg," thought Jimmieboy. "He did brave things like that."
Then the book went on again:
"The Oyster now will please come forth
And show the people here
Just how he stands upon his head
And then doth disappear."
This interested Jimmieboy very much, and he watched the canvas intently as one of the Trick Oysters walked out into the ring, and after kissing his hand to Jimmieboy and bowing to the rest of the audience—if there were any to bow to, and Jimmieboy supposed there must be, for the Oyster certainly bowed—he stood upon his head, and then without a word vanished from sight.
"Hooray!" shouted Jimmieboy, whereupon the book resumed:
"Now watch the ring intently, for
The Sea-Giraffe now comes,
And without any effort turns
plum-cake into crumbs."
"Huh!" cried Jimmieboy, as he watched the Sea-Giraffe turn the plum-cake into crumbs. "That isn't anything to do. I could do that myself, and make the plum-cake and the crumbs disappear too."
The book, of course, could not reply to this criticism, and so went right on.
"The Lobster and the Shark will now
Amuse the little folks
By making here, before their eyes,
Some rhymes and funny jokes."
When the book had said this there appeared on the canvas a really handsome Shark clad in a dress suit and a tall hat on his head, followed closely by a Lobster wearing a jester's coat and cap and bells, and bearing in his hand the little stick with Punch's head on the end of it.
"How do you do?" the Lobster seemed to say, as he reached out his claw and grabbed the Shark by his right fin.
"Sir," returned the Shark,
"If you would really like to know,
I'm very glad to say
That I am feeling pretty fine,
And think 'twill snow to-day."
"I'M VERY GLAD TO SEE YOU, SHARKEY," SAID THE LOBSTER.
"I'm very glad to see you, Sharkey," said the Lobster. "It is exceedingly pleasant to one who is always joking to meet a Fish like you."
"I pray excuse me, Lobster dear,
If I should ask you why?
Pray come and whisper in my ear,
What your words signify."
"Certainly, my dear Shark," replied the Lobster. "It is always exceedingly pleasant for a droll person to tell his jokes to a creature with a mouth as large as yours, because your smile is necessarily a tremendous one. I never like to tell my jokes to people with small mouths, because their smiles are limited, while yours is as broad as the boundless ocean."
"Thank you," returned the Shark. "That reminds me of a little song, and as I see you have a bass-drum in your pocket, I will sing it, if you will accompany me."
Here Jimmieboy had the wonderful experience of seeing a Lobster take a bass-drum out of his pocket. I shall not attempt to describe how he did it, because I know you are anxious to hear the Shark's song—as also was Jimmieboy—which went as follows:—that is, the words did; the time I cannot here reproduce, but any reader desirous of hearing it can do so if he will purchase a bass-drum set in G-flat, and beat it forty times to the second as hard as he knows how.
"I find it most convenient to
Possess a mouth like this,
Why, twenty babes at one fell swoop
I easily can kiss;
And sixty pounds of apple pie,
Plus ten of orange pulp,
And forty thousand macaroons
I swallow at a gulp.
"It's big enough for me without
Appearing like a dunce
To stand upon a platform and
Say forty things at once.
So large it is I have to wear
Of teeth a dozen sets,
And I can sing all in a bunch
Some twenty-nine duets.
"Once I was captured by some men,
Who put me in a lake,
Where sadly I did weep all day—
All night I kept awake:
And when the morning came at last,
So weary, sir, was I,
I yawned and swallowed up that pond,
Which left me high and dry.
"Then when my captors came to me,
I opened both my jaws,
And snapped each one of them right up
Without a moment's pause;
I swallowed every single man
In all that country round,
And as I had the lake inside,
They every one were drowned."
Here the Shark stopped, and Jimmieboy applauded.
"And what became of you?" asked the Lobster. "Did you die then?"
"Well," returned the Shark, with a puzzled expression on his face. "The song stops there, and I don't know whether I died or not. I presume I did, unless I swallowed myself and got into the lake again in that way. But, see here, Lobby, you haven't got off any jokes for the children yet."
"No, but I'm ready," returned Lobby. "What's the difference between me and Christmas?"
"Perhaps I'm very stupid,
Sometimes I'm rather slow—
But why you're unlike Christmas
I'm sure I do not know,"
replied the Shark.
"Oh no, you aren't stupid," said the Lobster. "It would be far stupider of you to guess the answer when it is my turn to make the little ones laugh. The reason I am different from Christmas is just this—now don't lose this, children—with Christmas comes Santa Claus, and with me comes lobster claws. Now let me give you another. What is it that's brown like a cent, is bigger than a cent, is worth less than a cent, yet costs a cent?"
"Perhaps I do not know enough
To spell C-A-T, cat—
And yet I really must confess
I cannot answer that,"
returned the Shark.
"I am very glad of that," said the Lobster. "I should have felt very badly if you could, because, you know, I want these children here to observe that while there are some things you can do that I can't do, there are also some things I can do that you can't do. Now the thing that is brown like a cent, is bigger than a cent, is worth less than a cent, yet costs a cent, is a cent's worth of molasses taffy—which the Terrapin will now pass around for sale, along with my photographs, for the benefit of my family."
Then the Lobster bowed, the Shark and he locked fin and arm again, and 'mid the strains of music from the band marched out of the ring, and Jimmieboy looking up from the canvas for a moment saw that the Imp had returned.