n
diameter; another driver fastening six others, horses and mares, to
another long halter, led them to the side opposite the first six. As
soon as they were stationed, waving long-lashed whips, plunge! ahead
went the wild horses, jumping into the wheat-sheaves breast-high,
rearing, squealing, kicking, lashing out their hoofs, their eyes
starting from their heads, while each driver stood firm in one spot,
whirling his whiplash and keeping his team within a circle one half of
which was in the wheat and the other half outside. Thus there were three
circles, one of wheat and the other two described by the horses as they
dashed wildly around, the drivers shouting, the wheat flying and being
quickly threshed under the swift-moving hoofs of the twelve four-legged
flails!

Caper and Dexter were meanwhile as busy as they could be sketching the
scene before them and endeavoring to catch notes of the first plunges
and excited motions of the horses. The active motive-power of the
foreground finished, with a hasty sketch of the Piombinara at the right
hand, in the middle ground the Campagna with its corn-fields and ruined
towers, while in the distance the Lepini mountains stretched away into
cloud-land--all afforded a sketch from which both Caper and Dexter
afterward made two very excellent paintings.

The sketches finished, Signor Ercole insisted upon the artists taking a
stirrup-cup with him before they left for Segni, and accordingly
accompanying him to the house, they drank success to their hospitable
entertainer, and departed highly pleased with this Representative Man.
It is his class--the intelligent Producers of the Papal States--to whom
we must look for all the life that will keep that worn-out old body
sufficiently animated to last until Regenerated Italy can take it in
hand, see it decently buried, and over its tomb achieve a brilliant
future.

PAINTING A DONKEY.

Segni might well boast of her hogs and donkeys. As the sun rose, a
wild-looking fellow stood by the Maggiore Gate and blew on a long horn
many rough blasts; then from all the streets and alleys rushed out black
hogs tumultuously, to the number of one hundred or more, and followed
their pastor with the horn, to the field or forest. There he guarded
them all day, and at sunset brought them back to the town; when as soon
as they reached the gate, the herd separated, and right and left, at
top-speed, every hog hastened to his own house. Poor as the inhabitant