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the æronaut-who went up in a balloon and was never heard of afterwards. His body was never found. The last seen of him was near the frontier of Canada, in his balloon, floating towards the icy regions of the north. With the exception of this mode of death, this floating off into space, severing absolutely every tie with mother-earth and leaving not even a corpse to tell the story-with this exception, a burial in the sea seems the most terrible, the most like annihilation.

Mark Twain relates that when he walked into a Marseilles restaurant, and attempted to give his order in French, the waiter laughed at him and began to talk English. Since then everybody else who writes about a European trip gets up something similar. This is all a joke. It reads well enough in a humorous book, but the American who believes it, and who goes to Marseilles expecting to talk English, will have to live on short rations. At the restaurants there are signs like this:

HERE ONE SPEAKS ENGLISH

which means simply that when you go there "one" speaks English, and you are that one; the rest speak French, and you must follow suit or not parlez at all.

Queer things in Marseilles are the vehicles and horses. The horses have their tails cut off, and are either extremely large or extremely small. One moment there passes a lady in a phaeton driving a pony the size of a large goat, the next moment a fellow in a blue blouse comes along with a cart and a troop of horses almost as large as elephants. The cart or dray is an enormous affair, fully forty feet long, and drawn sometimes by eight or ten of these powerful horses, all tandem, and on each horse a lot of bells and a collar surmounted by a curved leather cone a foot or eighteen inches high. These processions look very picturesque and very absurd.

After forty-eight hours in Marseilles, another two days' stop

was made in Genoa. The prison of St. Andrea, in that city, interested me. Thirty years ago there was confined within its gloomy walls a Philadelphian, Henry Wikoff, or the "Chevalier Wikoff," as he was dubbed by the American press. The incidents leading to his incarceration in this Genoese prison form a peculiar and, at the same time, a ridiculous story. Wikoff, being left heir when a young man to a considerable property, set out on a jaunt with Forrest the actor. They bought a carriage and rode through Russia in the most romantic style, Forrest occasionally dropping into tragedy, and scaring the wits out of the simple natives. Finally they brought up in London, where Wikoff met a Miss Gamble. Fifteen years later, when again in London, this time a man of thirty-five or forty, he saw Miss Gamble, made her an offer of marriage, was accepted, and the day for the ceremony appointed. The day before the marriage was to have taken place, the expectant bridegroom received a note from his betrothed announcing her intention of going to Italy instead of getting married. Wikoff was astounded, and set out post-haste for Italy. At Genoa he overtook his runaway betrothed, and learning that she was to go to the English consul to have her passport viséd, he bribed her coachman to drive to his hotel instead of to the consulate's. She went, was ushered into Wikoff's parlors, and was there confronted by her indignant lover with a demand for an explanation. Her surprise over, Miss Gamble coolly laughed, said it was only a caprice, and repledged herself to go through with the marriage. An hour later, leaving Wikoff's hotel, she lodged a complaint of abduction against him; the unlucky Romeo was waltzed off to jail, and after a long trial and a narrow escape from a ten years' sentence to the galleys, was sentenced to fifteen months in the prison of St. Andrea. In a curious and interesting book called "My Courtship and its Consequences," published in 1855, Wikoff gives an account of his extraordinary love affair. For fifteen months he endured the horrors of an Italian prison, augmented in 1854 by a small-pox epidemic among the prisoners. In the damp, stone-paved room where

he spent those weary months is his name, which he scratched on the wall thirty years ago. This is the only relic of the affair left, for in the Sardinian war with Austria, in 1859, the registers and other books of the prison were destroyed. St. Andrea is in the heart of the city, and although on an elevation, is surrounded by such tall buildings that the sunlight never enters the windows of its thick walls.

A very striking feature in Genoa are the policemen—not striking with their clubs, but in their personal appearance. They look more like capitalists or retired bankers than policemen. They wear silk hats, their overcoats are cut in the latest Newmarket style, and the silver-headed walking-canes which they sport would do credit to Broadway millionaires. They are, physically, splendid-looking men, and present a sharp contrast to the soldiers and gendarmes that lounge about Marseilles. The French some years ago were compelled to lower the standard of height in their army. A Frenchman in Marscilles six feet tall is a curiosity; there are scarcely enough of them to whip a small company of Chinese.

A few minutes before pulling out of Genoa there was a great bustle in the cabin. The waiters rushed backward and forward getting easy - chairs, arranging cushions, and spreading awnings. This commotion was on account of Baron Rothschild, of Vienna, who, with his wife, secretary, and a retinue of servants, was on his way to Sicily, thence to Corfu and the Grecian Isles. The famous financier is a cadaverous-looking man, sallow and sickly. The baroness, his first cousin, also his wife, atones for the baron's lack of charms. She has a commanding presence, fine features and form, and a gracious, winning manner.

As an offset to this increase to the cabin passenger list, a company of soldiers and a lot of convicts on their way to some island dungeon were taken into the steerage at Leghorn. They were heavily chained in couples, and again all together by one long chain fastened to their feet. Except at meal-times, when the right hand was freed, they remained in this miserable condi

tion, unable to sleep themselves, and preventing others from sleeping by the horrible clanking of their fetters.

The last week of the voyage in the Mediterranean passes like a dream. The vessel sails along the Spanish coast within full view of old Moorish castles and modern light-houses, passes near the Château d'If, Monte Cristo's prison, on by Corsica and Elba, places of Napoleon's birth and exile, and at last, on the morning of the twenty-second day, glides into the beautiful bay of Naples.

CHAPTER II.

THE HOVELS OF NAPLES.

PEDESTRIANISM creates a tremendous appetite. I became aware of this fact about two hours after I had landed, and set out through the labyrinthian streets of Naples on a search for a lodging-place. Without waiting to lay aside my knapsack, I stepped into one of the numerous cheap eating-shops and ordered five cents' worth of the celebrated Neapolitan "maccaroni al pompi d'oro," that is, macaroni cooked with butter and tomatoes.

It was about noon, and the damp, smoky room was filled with laborers and mechanics eating their mid-day meal. My costume and general appearance were quite in keeping with the cheapness and dinginess of the place, but not so, unfortunately, with my Italian. From my broken accent they at once knew I was a foreigner, and the jolly, good-hearted fellows stared at me with curiosity. What was an "Inglese" (Englishman they do not discriminate between Englishmen and Americans)-what was an Inglese doing in such a garb and in such a restaurant? What did I want? Where was I going? etc. My neighbor at the table, a little bolder or a little more inquisitive than the rest, put these questions, and I answered them, seemingly to his pleasure and satisfaction.

"Il signore non è Inglese ma Americano" (the signore is not English, but American), he said to his companions, "from the country, you know, whither Giuseppe went last year, and where, blessed be our Lady, he sells so much fruit and does so well-è vero- -it is true that you come from that distant land?"

I assured him that I did, that in fact I had but just landed, and this seemed to heighten his interest and admiration. He

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