dollar or two!_

_Do you wish your existence with Faith to imbue,
And so become one of the sanctified few;
Who enjoy a good name and a well cushioned pew
You must freely come down with a dollar or two.
For the gospel is preached for a dollar or two,
Salvation is reached for a dollar or two;
Sins are pardoned, sometimes, but the worst of all crimes
Is to find yourself short of a dollar or two!_

Although the Bard delivered this truthful poem off hand, so to speak, in
"broken" French, the cosmopolitan, polyglot audience "caught on" and
"shipped" the Stratford "poacher" a wave of tumultuous cheers!

That very night at the Theatre Saint Germain the new play of Garnier,
"Juives," was to be enacted before Henry the Fourth and a brilliant
audience.

William and myself were invited by a band of rollicking students to join
them in a front bench "clapping" committee, as Garnier himself was to take
the part of Old King Nebuchadnezzar in the great play, illustrating the
siege and capture of Jerusalem.

The curtain went up at eight o'clock, and the French actors began their
mimic contortions of face, lips, legs and shoulders for three mortal hours,
and while there was a constant shifting of scenes, citizens, soldiers, Jews
and battering rams, yells, groans and cheers, it looked as if the audience,
including King Henry, was doing the most of the acting, and all the
cheering! A maniac would be thoroughly at home in a French theatre!

The play had neither head, tail nor body, but it was sufficient for the
excitable, revolutionary Frenchman to see that the Jews were being robbed,
banished and slaughtered in the interest of Christianity and the late
Jesus, who is reported as having taught the lessons of "love," "charity"
and "mercy!"

The "Son of God," it seems, had been crucified more than fifteen hundred
years before the audience had been created; and although "Old Neb" of
Babylon had destroyed a million of Hebrews several hundred years previous
to the birth of the Bethlehem "Savior of Mankind," the "frog" and "snail"
eaters of France were still breaking their lungs and throats in cheering
for the destruction of anybody!

It was one o'clock in the morning when we got back to the hotel; and with
the Bacchanalian racket made by the "students" and fantastic "grisettes" it
must have been nearly daylight before William and myself fell into the arms
of sleep.

Sliding into the realm of dreams I he