After a decent time had elapsed, the new subject yielded very easily to the professor's magic passes, and fell into a profound sleep. The mesmerizer then led him, with his eyes shut, to the front of the stage, and pointed out to the spectators the phrenological development of his head; he then touched the bump of language, and set the seeming automaton talking. But here the professor was caught in his own trap. After once setting him going, he of the mnemonics refused to hold his tongue until he had given, to his weary listeners, the whole lecture he had delivered a few nights before. He pranced to and fro on the platform, declaiming in the most pedantic voice, and kept us for one blessed hour before he would suffer the professor to deprive him of the unexpected opportunity thus afforded him of being heard. It was a droll scene: the sly blacksmith in a profound fox's sleep--the declaimer pretending to be asleep, and wide awake all the time--and the thin, long-faced American, too wise to betray his colleagues, but evidently annoyed beyond measure at the trick they had played him. I once went to hear a lecture at the Mechanics' Institute, delivered by a very eccentric person, who styled himself the Hon. James Spencer Lidstone--_the Great Orator of the West_. My astonishment may be guessed better than described, when he gave out for the subject of his lecture--"Great women, from Eve down to Mrs. M---." Not wishing to make myself a laughing-stock, to a pretty numerous audience, I left the room. Going up the street next morning, a venerable white-haired old man ran after me, and pulling me by the shawl, said, "Mrs. M---, why did you leave us last night? He did you justice--indeed he did. You should have stayed and heard all the fine things he said of you." Besides scientific lecturers, Canada is visited by singers and musicians of every country, and of every age and sex--from the celebrated Jenny Lind, and the once celebrated Braham, down to pretenders who can neither sing nor play, worth paying a York shilling to hear. Some of these wandering musicians play with considerable skill, and are persons of talent. Their life is one of strange vicissitudes and adventure, and they have an opportunity of making the acquaintance of many odd characters. In illustration of this, I will give you a few of the trials of a travelling musician, which I took down from the dictation of a young friend, since dead, who earned a precarious living by his profession. He had the faculty of telling his adventures without the power of committing them to paper; and, from the simplicity and truthfulness of his character, I have no doubt of the variety of all the amusing anecdotes he told. But he shall speak for himself in the next chapter. A May-Day Carol.