Goodwin, and happily living a life
of dull and dreamy inaction?

The underlying threads reach far, stretching across the sea.
Following them out it will be made plain why "Shorty" O'Day, of the
Columbia Detective Agency, resigned his position. And, for a lighter
pastime, it shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus
beneath the tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere. Now to
cause laughter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowning crags
where formerly rang the cries of pirates' victims; to lay aside pike
and cutlass and attack with quip and jollity; to draw one saving
titter of mirth from the rusty casque of Romance--this were pleasant
to do in the shade of the lemon-trees on that coast that is curved
like lips set for smiling.

For there are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That segment of
continent washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the
sea a formidable border of tropical jungle topped by the overweening
Cordilleras, is still begirt by mystery and romance. In past times
buccaneers and revolutionists roused the echoes of its cliffs, and
the condor wheeled perpetually above where, in the green groves,
they made food for him with their matchlocks and toledos. Taken and
retaken by sea rovers, by adverse powers and by sudden uprising of
rebellious factions, the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has
scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master.
Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could
to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte and other
eminent swash-bucklers bombarded and pounded it in the name of
Abaddon.

The game still goes on. The guns of the rovers are silenced; but the
tintype man, the enlarged photograph brigand, the kodaking tourist
and the scouts of the gentle brigade of fakirs have found it out, and
carry on the work. The hucksters of Germany, France, and Sicily now
bag its small change across their counters. Gentleman adventurers
throng the waiting-rooms of its rulers with proposals for railways
and concessions. The little _opera-bouffe_ nations play at government
and intrigue until some day a big, silent gunboat glides into the
offing and warns them not to break their toys. And with these changes
comes also the small adventurer, with empty pockets to fill, light of
heart, busy-brained--the modern fairy prince, bearing an alarm clock
with which, more surely than by the sentimental kiss, t