catur, daughters of one of
Chicago's wealthy men, and this question settled, there remained the
stupendous difficulty of winning her. For I did not even possess the
right to lift my hat to these young ladies. My affair certainly
appeared quite hopeless.

"In the last week of August, an Italian and his wife encamped upon the
south shore of the lake with a small menagerie, if a camel, a bear,
and two monkeys can be dignified by so large a title. He was
accustomed to make the rounds of the hotels and cottages on alternate
days, one day mounted on the dromedary and strumming an Oriental lute,
on the others playing a Basque bagpipe while his bear danced, or
proceeding with hand-organ and monkeys. He had been a soldier in the
Italian colony of Massowah on the Red Sea, where he had acquired the
dromedary--which was the most gigantic one I have ever seen--and a
smattering of Arabic. English he had none, his wife serving as his
interpreter in that tongue.

"The sight of the camel was balm to my eyes. Not only was it agreeable
to me to see one of that race of animals so characteristic of my
native land, but here at last was a form of recreation opened to me. I
hired the camel on the days when the Italian was not using him and
went flying about all over the country. Little did I suspect that I
thereby became associated with the Italian in the minds of the public
and that presently they began to believe that I, too, was an Italian
and the real owner of the menagerie, employing Baldissano to manage it
for me while I lived at my ease at the hotel. I was heard conversing
with the Italian, and of course nobody suspected that I was talking to
him in Arabic. It was a tongue unknown to them all and they chose to
consider it Italian. Moreover, one Ashton Hanks, a member of the
Chicago board of trade, at the hotel for the season, had said to the
menagerie, jerking his thumb interrogatively at me, as I was busied in
the background with the camel, 'Italiano? Italiano?' To which
Baldissano replied, 'Si, signor,' meaning 'yes,' thinking of course
that Hanks meant him. 'Boss? Padrone?' said Hanks again, and again the
answer was, 'Si, signor.'

"So here I was, made out to be an Italian and the owner of a miserable
little menagerie which I employed a minion to direct, while myself
posing as a man of substance and elegant leisure. Here I was, already
proven a person of atrocious taste in dress, clearly proclaimed of no
social standing, of unkno