earance. Others, of this same class of persons, merely pass
through this chamber, having first said in a low tone to the most
potential of the priests, "Four dozen broiled; ale for one, and brandy
and water for three." The priest immediately repeats these words so
fraught with significance, in a loud voice, which resounds through the
whole chamber. An invisible priest, at some distance from the first,
again repeats them, and thus the mysterious sound is passed from one
unseen priest to another, until it ceases to be heard in the distance.

Nothing more is seen of the last described devotees, for some time after
their leaving the mysterious apartment; but about midnight a confused
sound of human voices is heard to issue from another mysterious chamber.
Some of those voices express a dogged determination on the part of
their proprietors, to remain shut up within the present confines until
the matutinal hours; other voices assure a universal confidence in the
powers of a certain bob-tail mare, while one teaches in the Italian
language the secret of ever living happily.[b] At between two and three
o'clock in the morning, several of our _operators_ are seen to emerge
from the aforesaid houses and subterranean abodes, in a very musical, as
well as affectionate frame of mind. One gentleman, totally regardless of
the lateness of the hour, after manifesting a strong desire to embrace a
large party of his friends, kindly invites them home to take tea with
him. Another walks homeward, expressing his notions on the secret of
living happily in a cantatory way. A third is assisted into a cab by his
associates, with directions to the driver to set him down at his
lodgings. Arrived there, he is put to bed, when he dreams that he is
falling down five hundred precipices; that afterwards a huge man is on
the point of cutting off his head, but a very prima donna like looking
lady comes in and intercedes for him, and she thus saves his life; that
he is just going to be married to the prima donna like looking lady,
when his pleasure is interrupted by the sound of ten thousand horns,
each one four times as large as that he saw the tyrant have in the
opera; whereupon he awakes, and discovers that there is a cry of fire,
and the firemen are making almost as much noise as the orchestra did,
when it was doing the crashing passages.

[b] Il segreto per esser felici.

* * * * *

In the morning, the chambermaid wond