The

"It was while I was playing the tumbleronicon in that side-show that I met the lady I married," he went on. "She was a Circassian Girl then. Most Circassian Girls are Irish, you know, but she wa'n't. She was from the White Mountains. Well, I made up to her from the start, and when the circus went into winter quarters we had a lot of money saved up, and we got married. My wife hadn't a bad ear for music, so that winter we worked up a double act, and in the spring we went on the road as Swiss Bell-ringers. We dressed up just as I had seen the I-talians dress in Naples."

Again I asked for an explanation. "Oh, you must have seen that act?" he urged; "though it has somehow gone out of style lately. It's to have a fine set of bells, three or four octaves, laying out on a table before you, and then you play tunes on them, just as you do on the tumbleronicon. There's some tunes go better on the bells than on anything else -'Yankee Doodle,' and 'Pop goes the Weasel.' It's quick tunes like them that folks like to have you pick out on the bells. Why, Mrs. Briggs and I used to do a patriotic medley, ending up with 'Rally round the Flag,' that just made the soldiers' widows cry. If we could only have gone on, we'd have been sure of our everlasting fortunes. But Mrs. Briggs went and lost her health after our daughter was born, the next summer. We kept thinking all the time she'd get better soon, and so I took an engagement here in New York, at Barnum's old museum in Broadway, to play the drum in the orchestra. You remember Barnum's old museum, don't you?"

I was able to say that I did remember Barnum's old museum in Broadway.

"I didn't really like it there; for the animals were smelly, you know, and the work was very confining, what with two and three performances a day. But I had

I had to confess that the course of the female of our species was more or less incalculable.

"My daughter, she'd died the year before her mother; and she'd never been sick a day in her life,-took after me, she did," Professor Briggs went on. “She and her husband used to do Yankee Girl and Irish Boy duets in the vaudevilles, as they call them now.”

I remarked that variety show, the old name for entertainments of that type, seemed to me more appropriate.

66

"That's what I think myself,” he returned, "and that's what I'm always telling them. But they say vaudeville is more up-to-date,-and that's what they want now, everything up-to-date. Now I think there's lots of the old-fashioned things that's heaps better than some of these new-fangled things they're so proud of. Take a three-ringed circus, for instance,-what good is a three-ringed circus to anybody, except the boss of it? The public has only two eyes apiece, that's all-and even a man who squints can't see more than two rings at once, can he? And three rings don't give a real artist a show; they discourage him by distracting folk's attention away from him. How is he to do his best if he can't never be certain sure that the public is looking at him?"

Here again I was able to express my full agreement with the professor.

"I'd never do an act in a three-ring show, no matter what they was to give me," he continued. "And I've got an act nearly ready now that there's lots of these shows will be wanting just as soon as they hear of it. I"-here he interrupted himself and looked up and down the street, as though to make sure that there were no concealed listeners lying in wait to overhear what he was about to say"I don't mind telling you about it, if you'd like to know."

I declared that I was much interested, and that I desired above all things to learn all about this new act of his.

"Well," he began, "I think I told you awhile ago that my granddaughter's all the family I got left now? She's nearly eight years old, and as cunning a little thing as ever you see anywhere- and healthy too, like her mother. She favors

me, just as her mother did. And she takes to music naturally-can't keep her hands off my instruments when I put them down -plays 'Jerusalem the Golden' on the pipes now so it would draw tears from a graven image. And she sings too-just as if she couldn't help it. She's a voice like an angel;-oh, she'll be a primy donny one of these days. And it was her sing ing gave me the idea of this new act of mine. It's Uncle Tom's Cabin arranged just for her and me. I do Uncle Tom and play the fiddle, and she doubles Little Eva and Topsy with a lightning change. As Little Eva, of course, she'll sing a hymn-Wait till the clouds roll by,' or the 'Sweet by-and-by,' or something of that sort; and as Topsy she'll do a banjo solo first, and then for the encore she'll do a song and dance, while I play the fiddle for her. It's a great scheme, isn't it? It's bound to be a go!"

I expressed the opinion that it seemed to me a most attractive suggestion.

"But I've made up my mind," he went on, not to bring her out at all until I can get the right opening. I don't care about terms first off, because when we make our hit we can get our own terms quick enough. But there's everything in opening right. So I shall wait till fall, or maybe even till New-Year's, before I begin to worry about it. And in the mean time my own act in the street goes. The Solo Orchestra is safe for pretty good money all summer. You didn't hear me the other evening, and I'm sorry, but there's no doubt it's a go. I don't suppose it's as legitimate as the tumbleronicon, maybe, or as the Swiss bells,-I don't know for sure. But it isn't bad, either; and in summer, wherever there's children around, it's a certain winner. Sometimes when I do the Turkish Patrol,' or things like that, there's a hundred or more all round me."

"From the way the little ones looked at me the other evening, when I asked you to move on," I said, "it was obvious enough that they were very anxious to

hear you. And I regret that I was forced to deprive myself also of the pleasure.'

He rose to his feet slowly, his loosejointed frame seeming to unfold itself link by link.

"I tell you what I'll do," he responded, cordially; "isn't your lady getting better?"

I was able to say that our invalid was improving steadily.

"Well, then," he suggested, "what do you say to my coming round here some evening next week? I'll give a concert for her and you, and any of your friends you like to invite. And you can tell her there isn't any of the new songs or waltzes or marches or selections from operas she wants I can't do. She's only got to give it a name, and the Solo Orchestra will play it."

Of course I accepted this proffered entertainment; and with that Professor Briggs took his leave, bidding me farewell with a slightly conscious air, as though he were accustomed to have the eyes of a multitude centred upon him.

And one evening, in the middle of the week, the Solo Orchestra appeared on the sidewalk in front of our house, and gave a concert for our special benefit.

Our invalid had so far regained her strength that she was able to sit at the window to watch the performance of Professor Briggs. But her attention was soon distracted from the Solo Orchestra itself to the swarm of children which encompassed him about, and which took the sharpest interest in his strange performance.

Just look at that lovely little girl on the stoop opposite, sitting all alone by herself, as though she didn't know any of the others," cried our convalescent. "She's the most elfinlike little beauty I've ever seen. And she is as blasée about this Solo Orchestra of yours as though it was Tannhäuser we were listening to, and she was the owner of a box at the Metropolitan."

When the concert came to an end at last, as the brief twilight was waning, when the Solo Orchestra had played the "Anvil Chorus" as a final encore after the "Turkish Patrol," when Professor Theophilus Briggs, after taking up the collection himself, had shaken hands with me, when I went down to convey to him our thanks, when it was so plainly evident that the performance was over at

commerce the Sumter, Alabama, Florida, and others, that drove our ships to seek safety under foreign flags or sank them in mid-ocean. At the commencement of the war our merchants were enjoying a lucrative commerce with Brazil and the River Plate Republics, but at the end our imports and exports had practically ceased, and England, Germany, Belgium, France, Russia, and Italy stepped in and took possession of the trade that we had abandoned. Our ships that but a few years before were encountered on every sea now vanished from the ocean. In 1869 the writer was attached to a frigate cruising to England, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, a voyage of over thirteen mouths, during which we met one American flag-that of a small fruiter bound to the Levant.

Our lumber trade was seized by Russia, our cotton, preferred above all others, was superseded by inferior English grades bearing our New England stamps and trade-marks. For many years they furnished agricultural supplies, though far inferior to our own, as they are at the present day. Germany entered the trade with small wares and notions, expanding it to all kinds of manufactured articles. The opportunities for trade in the new South American markets were thoroughly appreciated by European nations. They heavily subsidized their steamship lines, and competed so closely that our one line from New York to Rio met the fate of its transatlantic brothers, and went out of existence. In 1872 there were seventy English steamers running to the east coast of South America, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company continuing its voyage through the straits to Valparaiso and Callao. In spite of this some of our lost trade was recovered. Raw products, such as kerosene, lumber, and resin, so manifestly belonged to us that the trade returned and met with little competition. So with agricultural products, agricultural implements, and machinery; but the following tables show how far we are from occupying our proper position.

Comparing these tables, we see that the value of our exports or sales to the three republics amounts in round numbers to $21,000,000, which is but nine per cent. of the total export trade of $240,000,000, while the United States is a purchaser of nearly one-third of their total exports, or $89,000,000 out of a total of $285,000,000.

Are the merchants of the United States content to receive but $21,000,000 of the imports, and to permit a prize of $219,000,000 yearly to go to other countries, without an effort to compete? South America has long been the dumpingground for the refuse manufactures of Europe. In six years' service on that coast I never bought an imported article on shore that I could not have duplicated at home with a better article for the same money. Our manufactures are better than the European, and the people of South America know it and want them; but before any marked improvement can be made there must be a radical change in our methods of placing them on the market. In this it would be well for our merchants and manufacturers to study German methods, that nation to-day being the most aggressive of all commercial nations. By means of commercial museums at home and the permanent exhibitions of the wrought-iron industries in South America, as well as by opening chambers of commerce at Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Ayres, and Montevideo, she has increased her trade two hundred per cent. in the last five years, her export trade being larger than ours and rapidly gaining ground. She transports her own goods and transacts business through her own banks. These goods are manufactured for special markets and adapted to foreign requirements, carefully noting the taste of the locality where she trades. Her credits are made on the most satisfactory terms. She sends capable and experienced agents abroad who are familiar with the language of her customers. That such is the correct method is evidenced by the yearly increase of her volume of trade.

Our merchants seem to regard our ministers and consuls as national trade agents, through whom they can distribute

circulars, carefully written in English, with price-lists in our own money. One of our consuls in Brazil complains that merchants send circulars printed in Spanish, the would-be exporters evidently laboring under the impression that Spanish, not Portuguese, is the language of the country. Of course these circulars are not understood, and quickly find the waste-paper basket. Want of business houses, banking facilities, and direct communication all tend against us. On one occasion, while riding across the pampas of Uruguay in company with a merchant from Montevideo, and noting the miles upon miles of plain wire fencing with which the country seemed to be netted, I asked him where the wire came from, and he replied, "Belgium." And when I again asked why none came from the United States, he replied, "Because you have no agents or agencies, and probably do not care for the trade. The wire," he continued, "such as is sent to us, is very poor, can hardly stand the strain of setting up, and becomes rotten after a short period of use." Undoubtedly the United States could sell immense quantities of wire had they samples in the country, with energetic agents who could set up here and there a section of our wire with the Belgian and German fencing. It would quickly show its superiority. Barbed wire has no sale. The same may be said of Argentina and some of the pas toral provinces of Brazil. In 1893 Belgium sold to Argentina 12,000,000 kilos, Germany 7,000,000, and Great Britain 2,000,000. The United States sold none. In 1894 Belgium sold 17,000,000, Germany 9,000,000, England 1,800,000, and the United States two hundred kilos.

One of our consuls to Germany, Mr. Monaghan, who is untiring in his efforts to aid American manufacturers, reports that American barbed wire of excellent quality is entering Japan through German exporting houses, at a lower price than they can manufacture it. Yet the German prefers to take the trouble of exporting our wire rather than that we should do it ourselves, declaring that the trade in one article leads to another, and therefore it is to their advantage that the variety of our exports should not extend. Years ago the water for watering cattle was "cinched" or hoisted to the surface of the wells by horses, but gradually windmills are going up on the estancias. Those

I saw were almost invariably of European make. I inquired of this same gentleman where they came from, and pointing over to his own, he said, "That is American and the best in this country, costing me but little more than the others; but I knew all about them before I sent my order home, and could afford to wait. The others could not and would not buy on a trade cireular. Twould be like buying a pig in the poke." This is true of enginesportable and stationary-machines, and motors. The Crocker Wheeler Electric Company are placing agencies in Spanish American countries, a proper step to take if they desire the trade.

Buenos Ayres, with its population of 665,000, Montevideo, ninety miles across the river, with 226,000 more, and Rio Janeiro, with over a half-million-centres of immense trade-are rich and rapidly increasing. The city of Montevideo contemplates the building of an immense harbor that shall convert her open roadstead into a protected basin, and another at Coronilla, at the mouth of the river, which is a natural port for the exportation of cattle. If these valuable contracts are given to English or German companies, all the material, engines, dredges, etc., will be supplied from England or Germany; if to American companies, then these will be furnished by America. The same may be said of hundreds of contemplated improvements under consideration in each of the three republics.

The Argentine Republic is ambitious to become an exporting country, but exports will be limited to agricultural and pastoral products, the lack of coal and iron preventing them from competing with America and Europe. In spite of their seventy millions of sheep, and of the fact that the famous sea-island cotton can be grown in Tucuman, Formosa, and Paraguay, they can never supersede the manufactured foreign article. Should petroleum ever be used in place of coal as fuel, they might partially succeed, but our trade with South America would greatly increase in value.

Twenty-five years ago, while attached to a small gunboat cruising on the Rio de la Plata, Paraná, and Uruguay rivers. we were obliged to lay in tinned milk and butter sufficient to last us until we retured to Buenos Ayres or, "The Mount," as the sailors call Montevideo; for, though we were constantly within sight of im