nor strain; I caught up the spirit as a child
catches up an accent, and went the pace as pleasantly as though I had
been bred among them. I was therefore but a short time at table when
by way of matriculation I deemed it necessary to relate a story; and
certainly if they had astounded me by the circumstances of their high
and mighty acquaintances, I did not spare them in my narrative--in
which the Emperor of Japan figured as a very commonplace individual,
and the King of Candia came in, just incidentally, as a rather dubious
acquaintance might do. For a time they listened, like people who are
well accustomed to give and take these kinds of miracle; but when I
mentioned something about a game of leap-frog on the wall of China
with the Celestial himself, a perfect shout of incredulous laughter
interrupted me.

'"Well," said I, "don't believe me, if you don't like; but here have I
been the whole evening listening to you, and if I 've not bolted as much
as that, my name's not Con O'Kelly."

'But it is not necessary to tell you how, step by step, they led me to
credit all they were saying, but actually to tell my own real story to
them--which I did from beginning to end, down to the very moment I
sat down there, with a large glass of hot claret before me, as happy as
might be.

'"And you really are so low in purse?" said one. '"And have no prospect
of any occupation, nor any idea of a livelihood?" cried another.

'"Just as much as I expect promotion from my friend the Emperor of
China," said I.

'"You speak French and German well enough, though?" '"And a smattering
of Italian," said I. '"Come, you 'll do admirably; be one of us."
'"Might I make bold enough to ask what trade that is?" '"You don't
know--you can't guess even?" '"Not even guess," said I, "except you
report for the papers, and come here to make up the news."

'"Something better than that, I hope," said the man at the head of the
table. "What think you of a life that leads a man about the world from
Norway to Jerusalem; that shows him every land the sun shines on, and
every nation of the globe, travelling with every luxury that can make a
journey easy and a road pleasant; that enables him to visit whatever
is remarkable in every city of the universe--to hear Pasta at St.
Petersburg in the winter, and before the year's end to see an Indian
war-dance among the red men of the Rocky Mountains; to sit beneath the
shadow of the Pyramids as it were to-day, and ere