I had to confess that the course of the female of our species was more or less incalculable.

"My daughter, she died the year before her mother; and she'd never been sick a day in her life—took after me, she did," Professor Briggs went on. "She and her husband used to do Yankee Girl and Irish Boy duets in the vaudevilles, as they call them now."

I remarked that variety show, the old name for entertainments of that type, seemed to me more appropriate.

"That's what I think myself," he returned, "and that's what I'm always telling them. But they say vaudeville is more up to date—and that's what they want now, everything up to date. Now I think there's lots of the old-fashioned things that's heaps better than some of these new-fangled things they're so proud of. Take a three-ringed circus, for instance—what good is a three-ringed circus to anybody, except the boss of it? The public has only two eyes apiece, that's all—and even a man who squints can't see more than two rings at once, can he? And three rings don't give a real artist a show; they discourage him by distracting folk's attention away from him. How is he to do his best if he can't never be certain sure that the public is looking at him?"

Here again I was able to express my full agreement with the professor.

"I'd never do in a three-ring show, no matter what they was to give me," he continued. "And I've got an act nearly ready now that there's lots of these shows will be wanting just as soon as they hear of it. I"—here he interrupted himself and looked up and down the street, as though to make sure that there were no concealed listeners lying in wait to overhear what he was about to say—"I don't mind telling you about it, if you'd like to know."

I declared that I was much interested, and that I desired above all things to learn all about this new act of his.

"Well," he began, "I think I told you awhile ago that my granddaughter's all the family I got left now? She's nearly eight years old, and as cunning a little thing as ever you see anywhere—and healthy, too, like her mother. She favors me, just as her mother did. And she takes to music naturally—can't keep her hands off my instruments when I put them down—plays 'Jerusalem the Golden' on the pipes now so it would draw tears from a graven image. And she sings too—just as if she couldn't help it. She's a voice like an angel—oh, she'll be a primy donny one of these days. And it was her singing gave me the idea of this new act of mine. It's Uncle Tom's Cabin arranged just for her and me. I do Uncle Tom and play the fiddle, and she doubles Little Eva and Topsy with a lightning change. As Little Eva, of course, she'll sing a hymn—'Wait Till the Clouds Roll By,' or the 'Sweet By-and-By,' or something of that sort; and as Topsy she'll do a banjo solo first, and then for the encore she'll do a song and dance, while I play the fiddle for her. It's a great scheme, isn't it? It's bound to be a go!"

I expressed the opinion that it seemed to me a most attractive suggestion.

"But I've made up my mind," he went on, "not to bring her out at all until I can get the right opening. I don't care about terms first off, because when we make our hit we can get our own terms quick enough. But there's everything in opening right. So I shall wait till fall, or maybe even till New Year's, before I begin to worry about it. And in the meantime my own act in the street goes. The Solo Orchestra is safe for pretty good money all summer. You didn't hear me the other evening, and I'm sorry—but there's no doubt it's a go. I don't suppose it's as legitimate as the tumbleronicon, maybe, or as the Swiss bells—I don't know for sure. But it isn't bad, either; and in summer, wherever there's children around, it's a certain winner. Sometimes when I do the 'Turkish Patrol,' or things like that, there's a hundred or more all round me."