d he says Chicago. The initiative was mine, and taken at my
own peril, and it is fair that I should pay the penalty. But frequently
Jones will break in upon me in the middle of a column of figures and
tell me that the largest ranch in the world is situated in the State of
Sonora, Mexico. "Yes?" I say, hoping that he will go away. "Yes," he
assures me. "It is so large that the proprietor can ride 200 days on
horseback without leaving his own grounds. He has 2,000,000 men working
for him and he lives in a marble palace of 700 rooms. No one can be
elected President of Mexico against his will."

Now obviously it would have been better for me to remain altogether
unacquainted with Mexican conditions than to share Jones's distorted
view of affairs in that interesting republic. But Jones insists on
taking the innocent blank spaces in my knowledge of the world and
filling them up with the most incorrect data. He tells me, for instance,
that Mme. Finisterra once sang the mad scene from "Lucia" before the
late Sultan of Morocco, who wept so bitterly that the performance was
interrupted lest the monarch should go into convulsions. At the age of
eight Mme. Finisterra knew twelve operatic soprano roles by heart, and
when she was ten she played Juliet to Tamagno's Romeo. She now gets
$10,000 a night, in addition to the service of a maid, a chef, and two
private secretaries. In private life she is very stout. All this,
needless to say, is not true.

But I must not forget the clocks. The worst of the class, oddly enough,
are those found in front of watchmakers' and opticians' shops. I
sometimes think that such clocks are purposely put out of order by the
shop-keeper. The object is apparently to induce irascible old gentlemen
to enter the store, watch in hand, in order to protest against the
maintenance of a public nuisance. It is then a comparatively easy task
to sell them a pair of solid gold spectacles with double lenses at a
handsome profit. I, for one, would not blame the old gentleman who
should pick up a stone and hurl it at one of these Tartuffes and
Chadbands of the street-corner with their chubby, gilded hands reposing
on their prosperous stomachs, sleek and smug and ultra-respectable, but
unconscionable liars for all that. They are not content with their own
success in cheating, they throw discredit upon honest folk. How many a
faithful pocket-piece has been pulled out by its disappointed owner and
actually set wrong to make