hesitated, the persuasive though stern mouth of a musket hinted to him in expressive silence that he had better prevent its speech with song.

So he had to make his first appearance upon that "unworthy scaffold," before an audience, which, multifold as his experience had been, was one such as he had never sung to yet. As the shadows of evening began to fall, rough torches of pine-wood were lighted, and shed a glare such as Salvator Rosa loved to kindle, upon a scene such as he delighted to paint. The rascals had taste; that the tenor himself could not deny. They knew the choice bits of the operas which held the stage forty years ago, and they called for them wisely, and applauded his efforts vociferously. Nay, more, in the height of their enthusiasm they would toss him one of his own doubloons or dollars, instead of the bouquets usually hurled at well-deserving singers. They well judged that these flowers that never fade would be the tribute he would value most, and so they rewarded his meritorious strains out of his own stores, as Claude Duval or Richard Turpin, in the golden days of highway robbery, would sometimes generously return a guinea to a traveller he had just lightened of his purse, to enable him to con

tinue his journey. It was lucky for the unfortunate Garcia that their approbation took this solid shape, or he would have been badly off indeed; for it was all he had to begin the world with over again. After his appreciating audience had exhausted their musical repertory, and had as many encores as they thought good, they broke up the concert, and betook themselves to their fastnesses among the mountains, leaving their patient to find his way to the coast as best he might, with a pocket as light as his soul was heavy. At Vera Cruz a concert or two furnished him with the means of embarking himself and his troupe for Europe, and leaving the New World forever behind him.

And here I must leave him, for my story is done. The reader hungering for a moral may discern, that, though Signor Garcia received the price he asked for his lovely daughter, it advantaged him nothing, and that he not only lost it all, but it was the occasion of his losing every thing else he had. This is very well as far as it goes; but then it is equally true that M. Malibran actually obtained his wife, and that Mynheer Van Holland paid for her. I dare say all this can be reconciled with the eternal

fitness of things; but I protest I don't see how it is to be done. It is "all a muddle" in my mind. I cannot even affirm that the banditti were ever hanged; and I am quite sure that the unlucky Dutch merchant, whose goods were so comically mixed up with this whole history, never had any poetical or material justice for his loss of them. But it is as much the reader's business as mine to settle these casuistries. I only undertook to tell him who it was that paid for the Prima Donna-and I have done it.

V.

"I consider that a good story," said the Consul, when he had finished the narration out of which I have compounded the foregoing, "and, what is not always the case with a good story, it is a true one."

I cordially concurred with my honored friend in this opinion, and if the reader should unfortunately differ from me on this point, I beg him to believe that it is entirely my fault. As the Consul told it to me, it was an excellent good story.

"Poor Mynheer Van Holland," he added, laughing, "never got over that adventure. Not that the loss was material to him,—he

was too rich for that,-but the provocation of his fifty thousand dollars going to a parcel of Mexican ladrones, after buying an opera-singer for a Frenchman on its way, was enough to rouse even Dutch human nature to the swearing-point. He could not abide either Frenchmen or opera-singers all the rest of his life. And, by Jove! I don't wonder at it."

Nor I, neither, for the matter of that.— Wensley, and Other Stories.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

(BORN, 1809.)

D°

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE.

OI think that the particular form of lying often seen in newspapers, under the title, "From our Foreign Correspondent," does any harm?-Why, no,-I don't know that it does. I suppose it does n't really deceive people any more than the " Arabian Nights or Gulliver's Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers, the other day, which contains a number of improbabilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get it for you, if you would like to hear it. Ah, this is it; it is headed

66 OUR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE.

"This island is now the property of the Stamford family,-having been won, it is said,