that the
performance they had come to witness would not soon commence. Our berths
once visited, we cast about for some quiet position wherein to while
away the intervening time. The top of the deck-house offered as pleasant
a prospect as could be hoped for, and thither we mounted.

The whole available portion of the deck, poop included, was in
possession of a crowd of youngsters, many mere boys, from the Abruzzi,
destined to exchange their rags and emptiness for the gay uniform and
good rations of King Ferdinand's soldiery. In point of physical comfort,
their gain must be immense; and very bad must be that government
which, despite of these advantages, has forced upon the soldier's mind
discontent and disaffection. No doubt, the spectacle of the Swiss
regiments doubly paid, and (on Sundays at least) trebly intoxicated,
has something to do with this ill feeling. The raggedness of this troop
could be paralleled only by that of the immortal regiment with whom
their leader declined to march through Coventry, and was probably even
more quaint and fantastic in its character. Chief in singularity were
their hats, if hat be the proper designation of the volcanic-looking
gray cone which adhered to the head by some inscrutable dynamic law, and
seemed rather fitted for carrying out the stratagem of shoeing a troop
of horse with felt than for protecting a human skull. A triple row
of scalloped black velvet not unfrequently bore testimony to the
indomitable love of the nation for ornament; and the same decoration
might be found on their garments, whose complicated patchwork reminded
us of the humble original from which has sprung our brilliant Harlequin.
Shortly our attention was solicited by a pantomimic Roscius, some ten or
twelve years old, who, having climbed over the taffrail and cleared a
stage of some four feet square, dramatized all practicable scenes, and
many apparently impracticable, for he made nothing of presenting two or
three personages in rapid interchange. Words were needless, and would
have been useless, as the unloading of railway bars by a brawny
Northumbrian and his crew drowned all articulate sounds.

Notwithstanding these varied amusements, we were not sorry to see
arrive, first, a gray general, obviously the Triton of our minnows, and
close behind him the health and police officers of the government, to
whose paternal solicitude for our mental and bodily health was to be
ascribed our long delay in port. The