em to shrink from taking my
hand."

"Because of your talons," somebody ventured to explain.

"Oh, no! the Blessed Virgin would never allow _that_," he asserted
confidently.

Before the end of the summer, however, he seemed to lose confidence in
the Virgin's tampering with natural law for his sake. One day we saw
that the talons were sacrificed, and were told that the Mother of God
had announced to our Brazilian in a dream that she would accept a vow
never to cut his hair in place of the devoted nails.

A few days later our _divoto_ came upon the loggia, where sat a bevy of
ladies of many nations, in a screeching aboriginal rage.

"I sacrificed my vow to you _belles dames_, although I refused it to
Madame la Duchesse de B----," he screamed, "and yet you avoid me. Am I
not an _homme fait_" (certainly our sixty-year-old Brazilian had never
read "Pendennis"), "and better than any of these boys you admire? Do you
imagine the Blessed Virgin will not pay you off for this? Do you think
she will go back on a man like me,--of whom Victor Emanuel himself was
jealous when I rode on the Pincian with Madame la Princesse della
Gr----?"

* * * * *

We thus found many peculiar people in the varied experiences of _nos
pensions_. We found often learning and often culture, but more vulgarity
than we did refinement, more splendor than delicacy of habit, more
blatant ignorance than culture, more _sans gene_ than dignity of manners
and character. It is always thus in any mere "cosmopolitan mess," any
"hotch-potch of nationalities." For the eccentric and obnoxious types
are always and everywhere those most largely _en evidence_, while the
gentle and refined nestles closest to the cool, still, mossy ground,
leaving sunny flaunting to wider blooms and stronger perfumes.

A RANDOM SHOT.

An existence, if even a dull one, in a large and busy city full of life,
when contrasted in the mind of a romantic young lady of eighteen summers
with an enforced captivity in an isolated cottage by the sea-shore,
grows to possess charms and an excitement which, until so considered,
may have remained totally unappreciated.

Could anything be more depressing than the knowledge that this latter
condition must be endured with no other companion than a hypochondriacal
papa, whose ailings so monopolized his time and attention that a
daughter's happiness sunk into insignificance? Little wonder that she
should melt int