"Yes, but I can't think of it without its antithesis, the home of the workingman and the hut of the poor negro," Bradley replied. They moved on again in silence. Darky newsboys, shivering with cold, met them at every corner, holding out to them in their stiffened little claws their "Styah papahs." The avenue swarmed with sight-seers, mainly of the West and South. Every hotel door was like the vent to a hive--black with comers and goers. The old man with the cough medicine met them again. They could repeat his singsong cry now, and with a little impulse of fun-making Ida joined in with him: "_Doc-ter Fergusson's double-ex selly-brated, Philadelphia cough drops, for coughs or colds, sore throat or hoarseness; five cents a package._" They soon struck into the gayer streams of people making their way towards the theatre; and when they took their seats in the crowded balcony, poverty was lost sight of. "There! who says this is not a bright and gay world?" said Ida. "No poor, no aged, no infirm, no cold or hungry people here." "This is the bright side of the moon," replied Bradley gravely. They looked around, and studied the people with a mental comparison with other throngs they had seen on the far prairies of Kansas and Iowa. There were girls with eyes full of liquid light, with dainty bonnets nestling on their soft hair; their faces were like petals of flowers; the curves of their chins were more beautiful than chalices of lilies; their dresses, soft, shapely, of exquisite tones and texture, draped their perfect bodies. Their slender fingers held gold-and-pearl opera glasses. The young men who sat beside them wore the latest fashions in clothing cut from the finest fabrics. Heavy men of brutal bulk slouched beside their dainty daughters, the purple blotches on their bloated and lumpy faces showing how politics or business had debauched and undermined them. Everywhere was the rustle of drapery and soft, musical speech. All that was lacking in "the round up" at Chiquita was here--shining, fragrant, and rustling. * * * * * The curtain rose upon the fair in Nottinghamshire; and with the sweet imaginative music as solvent and setting, the gay lads and lassies of far romance sang and danced under the trees in garments upon which the rain had never fallen, and unflecked with dust. Knights in splendid dress of silver and green, with jewelled swords and gay sashes, came and went, while the merry peasant youths circled and sang task-free and sin-free.