cians will tear her
reputation to pieces among themselves! Why should musical people be, of
all others, most fond of discord?"

CRITIC. "There! those fools are determined to make her sing again. I
can't stand this. I'll see MAX once more, and if he don't do the right
thing, I'll say that NILSSON was played out in Europe before she came
here, and that she is a complete failure."

YOUNG MAN, "Sweetest! may I ask you one question?"

YOUNG LADY. "No, you shan't. Will you keep quiet? Everybody is looking
at you."

EVERYBODY. "Sh! sh! sh!"

NILSSON sings again. As her delicious notes die out in the thunder of
applause, I make my way out of the Hall, into the clear and silent
night. For not even the witchery of VIEUXTEMPS'S violin is fit to mate
in memory with the peerless tones of NILSSON.

Here I meant to do some fine writing, but as this is PUNCHINELLO, and
not the "Easy Chair" of Harper's Magazine, I conquer the temptation.
Wherefore I accept the gratitude of my readers, and sign myself

MATADOR.

* * * * *

Congestion at "The Sun."

PUNCHINELLO is pained to know that the circulation of his bewitching
contemporary, _The Sun_, is daily growing more and more languid.
Paralysis has set in, and the patient but seldom has the energy to
dictate the daily bulletin giving the state of his circulation.

* * * * *

Only a Suggestion.

It will be bad enough for the Prussian Cavalrymen to water their horses
in the Seine, but if they go to driving their stakes in the Bois de
Boulogne, won't the Parisians think it looks a little like running
things into the ground?

* * * * *

OUR MASTERS OF ART.

MR. PUNCHINELLO: The knights of the pencil and easel, having returned
from their usual visits to their summer haunts, and having exchanged the
blue skies and grassy vales of Nature for the smoky ceilings and dirty
floors of Art, (I believe that is the proper way to commence this kind
of an article,) your correspondent has visited a number of them, and has
obtained authentic accounts of their present occupations, and has also
been permitted to make slight sketches of some of their principal works.

BIERSTADT, as usual, is painting Yos. Having entirely exhausted the Yo
Semite, he is now at work on a grand picture of a Southdown Ewe, and
will soon commence a view of his studio,--at sunrise. He well deserves
his title of the Yeoman o