"Thrillin'! Yoo bet! But we didn't repeat it. Bekaze yoo see the wire slackened, and the arrer struck Sam on the top uv the head and scalped him as clean as a Camanche Injun cood hev done it, and he howled and jumped onter De Lacy and the wire tore down the two wings it wuz hitched onter, and De Lacy in gittin' rid uv him tore down the rest uv the wings, and they clinched and rolled down onto the stage, and the awjence got up and howled, and the peeple all rushed on, and there wuz about ez lively a scene ez I ever witnessed in a long and varied experience. It wuz picteresk and lurid. I rung the curtain down and separated 'em. It wuz a good idear, but it didn't jes work, owin' to defective machinery." [Illustration: THE TELL CATASTROPHE.] [Sidenote: THE CAREER OF SAM.] "But it turned out pretty well, after all. The smart man is he who turns wat to others wood be a misfortoon to account. I hed the scalp tanned with the hair outside, and ez soon ez Sam's bald head healed up I exhibited him in a blue roundabout, with brass buttons--I bought the soot cheap uv a bell boy at a hotel in Cincinnati--ez the son uv the Rev. Melchizadek Smith, a missionary for thirty years among the Injuns, who wuz scalped at the time his father wuz barbariously killed, and I hed a life uv the Rev. Smith writ, and an account of the massacre, and Sam sold it after he hed bin exhibited. It did very well till he got too big for that biznis." "But Sam is doin' very well. He is now an end man in a minstrel show, and he does the Lancashire clog, and does mighty well in the wench biznis, and he hez a partner in the brother biznis, the De Montmorencies, I beleeve they wuz, the last time I heerd uv 'em. He will git on--he hez a great deal uv talent and kin turn his hand to almost anything." [Illustration: ZOOLOGICAL ROOM--BRITISH MUSEUM.] CHAPTER XXV. IRELAND. "'Tis the most distressful country that ever yet was seen, They're hanging men and women there for the wearin' of the green." From France the gay, France the prosperous, France the delightful, to Ireland the sad, Ireland the poor, Ireland the oppressed, is a tremendous jump. Contrasts are necessary, and my readers are going to have all they want of them. [Illustration: CORK HARBOR.] [Sidenote: CORK.] Cork is a lovely city; that is, it would be a lovely city were it a city at all. Nature intended Cork for a great city, but man stepped in and thwarted Nature. It is situated on the most magnificent site for a city there is in all Europe. A wonderfully beautiful river, with water enough to float any vessel, flows through it; and at the mouth of that river, twelve miles below, is one of the great harbors of the world. Queenstown--I wonder that any Irishman ever consented to call it Queenstown--is the nearest port to the great western hemisphere, and Cork should be the center of all the trade from America.