easured
by a tailor, who regularly cut out the materials, when, to general
surprise, the voracious fellow ate up the whole in twenty minutes.
Compared with these performances some of the current prodigies of
gormandism which the papers so often report are surely as trifling
in amount as they are tame and uninventive in the character of their
details.

* * * * *

The strange accident of Albertacce brought to general notice an
obscure Corsican custom which singularly contrasts with the ordinary
funeral ceremonies of Christendom. The _vocero_, as this rite is
styled, is palpably an inheritance from the classical conquerors of
the island, now preserved only in some of the interior villages.
When the head of a family dies, the body, after being robed in its
handsomest garments, is laid in state on a table in the largest room,
surrounded with lights. Then, five or six hours before the burial,
all the women of the village and the district, clothed in black and
with bare heads, assemble around the corpse, the mother and sisters
of the dead at the feet, the nearest relations next, and so on. When
this assemblage is formed the most renowned poetesses or singers of
their number, with hair disheveled and bleeding faces, and a white
handkerchief waving in the hand, chant in verse the history, virtues
and destiny of the dead. The mournful cadence, the profuse weeping and
the dramatic gestures of the ceremony are striking. The chief mourner
amid her wailing sometimes raises the head or the arm of the corpse,
and plucks out her own hair or freshly tears at her face till the
blood pours again from the wounded skin, while the half-stifled
sobbing of the whole company adds to the effect. When at length the
priest arrives, all is hushed, but the women follow the corpse in
procession to the church, where the ceremony sometimes lasts several
hours. Such, at least, is the account of the _vocero_ given by a
correspondent of the _XIX'e Siecle_, who visited the scene of the
Albertacce accident, where a roomful of celebrants were suddenly
precipitated into the cellar by the giving way of the floor. The mere
mention of the accident came by telegraph, but it appears that twenty
dead and fourteen mangled women were taken from the wreck of the house
where they had been singing their mournful _vocero_.

* * * * *

Unless the Paris postmen are more patient than those of Madrid (who
wer