I noticed that mine host stood watching to see that I entered the printing-office safely.

The editor remarked, after I had told him all the experience narrated here, commencing with the washing-machines,—­

’It’s a bad case, and I don’t admire your experience at all, to speak candidly; but I have a little idea of my own to work out, and you can help me do it, perhaps.  In the first place, though, I want to know whether you intend to continue in this line of business,—­eh?’

‘Not I,’ was my fervent reply; ’I’m satisfied to leave lecturing to those who have a reputation, and to earn my bread and butter in a, for me, more legitimate way.  But what is it you have in view?’

’Come and see me this evening, when I am at leisure, and I’ll tell you what my enterprise is.  Meantime, will you sell me your lecture?  I can’t afford to pay much for it, but I’ll agree to settle your hotel bill if you’ll part with it.  Not that I think it’s worth it, but you need to be helped somehow right away.’

I jumped at the chance, and thanked my friend heartily.  He asked if I would please go and send the landlord to him, and I retired to perform that errand.

I was punctual to my appointment in the evening, and listened to the project my editorial angel had in view; a plan by which he proposed to inflict a lesson on the negligent Tyrians, and at the same time replenish my purse.  He explained to me the part I was to perform in this enterprise, and I found I could enter heartily into the spirit of it.  We shook hands in the best of humors, and parted that evening understanding each other perfectly.

III.—­HE MAKES A HIT IN TYRE.

The next day, the entire jobbing facilities of the Times office were brought into requisition, and toward evening a mammoth bill was posted around the town, which read as follows:—­

MONS. BELITZ’S CELEBRATED AND MAGNIFICENT EXHIBITION, THE GREAT TRAVELING HUMBURG!  The most wonderful entertainment, whether CAININE, PRISTINE, OR QUININE, ever brought before the astonished Public’s visual organs!!!

* * * * *

The avant courier of this monster troupe has the honor of announcing to the ladies and gentlemen of Tyre, that Mons. BELITZ, accompanied by his entire retinue of attaches and supes, Female Dancers and Dogs, Operatic Vocalists and Vixens, Royal Musicians and Monsters, Bengal Tigers and Time-servers, Magicians and Madmen, Flying Birds, Swimming Fishes, Walking Cats and Dogs, Crawling Reptiles, and various other extraordinary and impossible arrangements, the like of which never before appeared in Bog county, until the arrival of the present occasion, to wit:—­

AT GRECIAN HALL, TYRE,

On Saturday Evening, December 22, 1859.

* * * * *

—–­> LOOK AT THE ARRAY OF TALENT! <—–­