‘No mistake at all,’ said Barnum. ‘You see, this is how it is. There are a good many gentlemen in this city fond of practising on brass instruments; but they cannot do so at home because of their neighbours’ objections. So I find them room on my Balcony during so many hours a day, where the street is so noisy that it does no harm; and they give me so much a week for my trouble in keeping the organisation complete. You don’t think me such a fool as to pay such a wretched lot of players surely? However, as you seem to have been honestly mistaken, you can pay me ten dollars this week; but hereafter I can make no reduction.’ There was a vacancy in the Balcony Band the following Monday. We take it that the shrewd showman was not quite so much astonished at the way his advertisement was misconstrued, as one A. B., who, recognising a long-lost friend in the stalls of the theatre, but unable to catch his eye, notified in the ‘agony’ column of the _Times_: ‘If the gentleman who was in the stalls at the —— Theatre on the evening of the 5th inst. will write to the following address, he will hear from the Box above;’ and received nearly a score of replies. The first he opened, ran: ‘MY DEAR MADAM—I cannot express to you how delighted I felt this morning on taking up the _Times_ and reading your advertisement. How exceedingly kind and thoughtful of you to communicate with me in this way. Pray, let me know as quickly as possible when and where I may see you. I am burning with impatience to speak to you. Can we meet this evening? Do send me a note, or better still, a telegram, here, on receipt of this.—Yours Most Affectionately.’ The second letter, commencing ‘Mia Carissima,’ suggested a meeting at the Duke of York’s Column, and ended: ‘Good-bye, pet. Yours ever and a day—The Gentleman in the Stalls.’ A third deluded mortal declared he had not slept a wink after seeing A. B. at the theatre. ‘You know Who’ informed the ‘Dearest Being,’ whose himage he still saw before him, that his passion was much too much for ordinary words to tell; that after wandering all his life, mixing in revolutions, &c., he should like to stop at last, and finished somewhat prosaically with: ‘It’s just four o’clock. All are in bed and fast asleap. Good-night. I’m not married.’ And so on with a batch of other aspirants, who evidently deemed the anonymous occupant of the Box nothing short of an heiress.