He then sent a fly-blown little boy for a tumbler of brandy, and was weeping into it copious when we emerged from his presence. Upon entering the shattered temple of the dramy, we found a vetrun of 1812, which the manager had hired to keep company with the man what lit the gas, that artik having declared that if he was kept in solitude any longer he should shoot himself from sheer melancholy. It was the vetrun's business to keep moving from seat to seat until the performance was over, so that the artful cuss of a manager could say "every seat was okipied" in the next morning's newspaper. When the manager, who was representing the orkestra with a comb wrapt in paper, saw me and my fren, he paused in the middle of his overture, and said we should have a private box, but that the families of his principal artiks were keepin' house in the private boxes, and was rayther crowded for room. Seeing me put my hand in my pocket, he said, tearful: "Tellum me, I conjure ye, are there any such things as quarters in the round world? It is now six months since I last mingled with the world, and I really forget how many make a dollar." Touched to the quick by his plaintiff tone, I drew forth a quarter, and held it before his anguished vision. Never shall I forget how his eyes was sot on that ravishing coin. "Can it indeed be real?" says he, "or is it but a quarter of the mind?" I was afeard he might come the "let me clutch thee" dodge if I inflamed his imagination any longer; so I put it back into my pocket, and axidently revealed the handle of my revolver.