There the police, attracted by eight electric bulbs that John illuminated, found him whispering to a gold fish and acting in a frightfully suspicious manner. They crept upon him stealthily, as the department requires them to do. Just as they reached him, a parrot, awakened its sleep, said: “Officer, there’s your man!” There could be no mistake, they had corroboration. When the reserves, with Slippery John sliding along among them, reached the jail, they saw the warden come screaming from the building. They asked him wherefore the noise and whence his course, to which he replied that Slippery John, the demon skidder, had flown the jail. Then he saw the prisoner, and wept, kissed him on the forehead, and slammed him back in his cell. All went well until the other night, at the well-known and justly revered witching hour of midnight. Peter Austin, member of a very aristocrooked family, rose up feebly from his part of John’s cell and declared he was ill, requiring water. The warden, who sometimes drinks the stuff himself, was merciful, and let Peter patter out. The cell door--gods, what an error!--was left open, and when Peter returned--tableaux! Slippery John gone again! The warden is inconsolable. He has issued an order that hereafter all prisoners that gasp for water must remain in their cells and drink from the nozzle of the hose. Vaudeville Stunts in Mountain Settlements. Little mountain settlements in the region of Julian, Cal., have their vaudeville circuits, and they are as important to the people and afford them as much pleasure as Keith’s or the Orpheum afford pleasure seekers of the large cities. The players are generally Mexicans. They travel by wagon or burro, coming up from lower California, swinging across the mining region, and turning south again into the peninsula. A handbill pinned to the door of the post office or store is the only program. It announces, in Spanish, that a company of artists, unsurpassed for excellence, will be honored to entertain the people at greatly reduced prices--fifteen cents for children and twenty-five cents for adults, whereas in large cities, like Ensenada, the company wouldn’t attempt to do the same thing for less than a dollar admission. Sometimes the performance is acrobatic; sometimes it is a concert, with accordion and guitar, to be followed with a dance; again it may be an old-fashioned Punch and Judy show, or a roaring comedy, the actors speaking their lines in Spanish, which, by the way, makes no difference to the border folks, all of whom understand that tongue. In addition to the handbill, a crier goes through the vicinity, announcing from house to house the merits of the performers, and urging everybody not to miss this last and only chance to see and hear so rare a collection of stars, who, meanwhile, are preparing their evening meal beside the road and making their beds under a tree.