ound rooms where an
amateur minstrel entertainment had been given. Rude lettering upon the
walls recorded the fact in lampblack, and a monster hand pointed with
index finger to its temporary bar. Burnt-cork _debris_ was scattered
about, and there were "old soldiers" enough on the premises to have
quite staggered a moralist. The Muscovite reign is over. The Princess is
in her grave on the hill yonder,--a grave that was forgotten for a time
and lost in the jungle that has overgrown the old Russian cemetery. The
Indians mutilated that tomb; but Lieutenant Gilman, in charge of the
marines attached to the Adams, restored it; and he, with his men, did
much toward preserving Sitka from going to the dogs.

Gone are the good old days, but the Americanized Sitka does not propose
to be behind the times. I discovered a theatre. It was in one of the
original Russian houses, doomed to last forever--a long, narrow hall,
with a stage at the upper end of it. A few scenes, evidently painted on
the spot and in dire distress; a drop-curtain depicting an utterly
impracticable roseate ice-gorge in the ideal Alaska, and four
footlights, constituted the sum total of the properties. The stage was
six feet deep, about ten feet broad, and the "flies" hung like "bangs"
above the foreheads of the players. In the next room, convenient in
case of a panic, was the Sitka fire department, consisting of a machine
of one-man-power, which a small boy might work without endangering
anybody or anything.

Suburban Sitka is sweet and sad. One passes on the way to the wildwood,
where everybody goes as often as may be,--a so-called "blarney stone."
Many a fellow has chipped away at that stone while he chatted with his
girl--I suppose that is where the blarney comes in,--and left his name
or initials for a sacred memory. There are dull old Russian hieroglyphs
there likewise. Love is alike in all languages, you know. The truth
about the stone is merely this: it is a big soft stone by the sea, and
of just the right height to rest a weary pilgrim. There old Baranoff,
the first governor, used to sit of a summer afternoon and sip his
Russian brandy until he was as senseless as the stone beneath him; and
then he was carried in state up to the colonial castle and suffered to
sober off.

Beyond the stone, and the curving beach with the grass-grown highway
skirting it, is the forest; and through this forest is the lovers' lane,
made long ago by the early colonists and