"Although," said the _Prince_, "he now and then casts his lot on the turn of the die." [Illustration: LILLIE WEST.] "Yes, his lot of last year's clothing," the jolly _King_ remarked, "on the turn of the dyer." This effort resulted in six of the supers, who were gotten up in voluminous dominoes with elaborate, but inexpensive, pasteboard trimmings, and who were within hearing distance, falling stiff and stark to the stage. "Does this kind of thing occur often?" I inquired. "Oh," growled the _Professor_, "that gag was stuffed and on exhibition at the Centennial. It was found in an Indian mound near Memphis, and is old." And so the talk went on for a while, when up went the curtain and _King Pin_ leaping on the stage amidst the laughter and plaudits of the house, told how the pretty _Prince Caprice_ had tired of mundane things and was heavily sighing for the fountain-head of the lambent silvery moonlight. _Microscope_, who was at the head of the Royal College of Astronomers, was besought to do something to aid the _Prince_ in accomplishing the journey to Merrie Moonland, and in a neat speech unfolded his plans for a grand dynamo-etherial line that would speedily carry the _Prince_ to the wished-for happy Land of Luna. [Illustration: PAULINE MARKHAM.] Then came the glorious moment when the flight moonwards was to be made. I hurried around to the prompter's side of the stage where I saw the mouth of the huge cannon gaping, and got there as they were about to fire it. Imagine my surprise to find the extraordinary piece of ordnance made entirely of pasteboard, a substance that a few grains of gunpowder would blow into as many pieces as the leaves of Vallambrosia. Still the passengers were to be fired out of this contrivance, and I felt that if they and the cannon could stand it, it was none of my business. It had all been explained to the audience, that _King Pin_, _Prince Caprice_ and _Prof. Microscope_ were the only three persons to be given seats in the cartridge-cab in which the wonderful journey was to be made. The question therefore naturally arose, what was to become of the multitude of characters that crowded the "wings." There were "supers" in black, yellow and mottled dominoes with high _papier-maché_ casques, and huge ear-trimmings that reminded one of the flaps that decorate the sides of a Chicago girl's head, or the sails of a lake lumberman. There were star-gazers with zodiacal garments and tin telescopes, all set off by great pairs of soda-bottle-lens eye-glasses, that gave them the air of a Secchi, or somebody else of astronomical aspect. There were guards who shouldered tooth brushes made entirely of wood, with index hands surmounting the tops of their chapeaux and serving to indicate that their intellects had gone moon-hunting; and there were other creatures, among them, horrible genii, who started for the moon by some short route across lots and got there long before the regular excursionists.