elephants, and
ostriches, and sell the entire batch to Van Amburgh & Co. at a
high premium, as a freshly imported menagerie, all very fat and
valuable.

Then he came down from this rather elevated flight of fancy, and
filled away on another tack. Before he reached the house he had
fully made up his mind that Madame Bruce, the Mysterious Veiled
Lady, must be a stray Oriental Princess in reduced circumstances,
cruelly thrust from the paternal mansion by the infuriated
proprietor, her father, and compelled to seek her fortune in a
strange land. He had never seen a princess, and he resolved to
treat this one with all respect and loyal veneration; to do this,
if possible, without compromising his conscience as a republican
and a voter in the tenth ward,--but to do it at all hazards.

The immense fortune which would undoubtedly be hers in the event
of the relenting of her brutal though opulent father, suggested
the feasibility of a future elopement, and a legal marriage,
according to the forms of any country that she preferred--he
couldn't bethink him of a Persian justice of the peace, but he
did not despair of being able to manage it to her entire and
perfect satisfaction.

Her undoubted great misfortunes had touched his tender heart. He
would see this suffering Princess--he would tender his sympathy
and offer his hand and the fortune he hoped she would be able to
make for him. If this was haughtily declined there would still
remain the poor privilege of buying a dose of magic, paying the
price in current money, and letting her make her own change.

Having matured this disinterested resolve, he proceeded calmly on
his journey, wondering as he walked along, whether, in the event
of a gracious reception by his Princess, it would be more courtly
and correct to kneel on both knees, or to make an Oriental
cushion of his overcoat and sit down cross-legged on the floor.

This knotty point was not settled to his entire satisfaction when
he reached that lovely portion of fairy-land near the angle of
Broome and Thompson streets. The Princess had taken up her
temporary residence in the tenant-house No. 513 Broome, which,
elegant mansion affords a refuge to about seventeen other
families, mostly Hibernian, without very high pretensions to
aristocracy.

His ring at the door of the noble mansion was answered by a
grizzly woman speaking French very badly broken, in fact
irreparably fractured. This grizzly Gaul let him into the h