MR. SID.  HAHN,
     Hotel Savoy,
     London,
     England.

It’s a second all right but not a second Merry Widow.  Heard of a winner in Budapest.  Shall I go.  Spent to-day from eleven to five running around the Ringstrasse looking for mythical creature known as the chic Viennese.  After careful investigation wish to be quoted as saying the species if any is extinct.

     WALLIE.

This, remember, was in the year 1913, B.W.  Wallie, obeying instructions, went to Budapest, witnessed the alleged winner, found it as advertised, wired Hahn to that effect, and was joined by that gentleman three days later.

Budapest, at that time, was still Little Paris, only wickeder.  A city of magnificent buildings, and unsalted caviar, and beautiful, dangerous women, and frumpy men (civilian) and dashing officers in red pants, and Cigany music, and cafes and paprika and two-horse droshkies.  Buda, low and flat, lay on one side; Pest, high and hilly, perched picturesquely on the other.  Between the two rolled the Blue Danube (which is yellow).

It was here that Hahn and Wallie found Mizzi Markis.  Mizzi Markis, then a girl of nineteen, was a hod carrier.

Wallie had three days in Budapest before Hahn met him there.  As the manager stepped from the train, looking geometrically square in a long ulster that touched his ears and his heels, Wallie met him with a bound.

“Hello, S.H.!  Great to see you!  Say, listen, I’ve found something.  I’ve found something big!”

Hahn had never seen the boy so excited.  “Oh, shucks!  No play’s as good as that.”

“Play!  It isn’t a play.”

“Why, you young idiot, you said it was good!  You said it was darned good!  You don’t mean to tell me—­”

“Oh, that!  That’s all right.  It’s good—­or will be when you get through with it.”

“What you talking about then?  Here, let’s take one of these things with two horses.  Gee, you ought to smoke a fat black seegar and wear a silk hat when you ride in one of these!  I feel like a parade.”  He was like a boy on a holiday, as always when in Europe.

“But let me tell you about this girl, won’t you!”

“Oh, it’s a girl!  What’s her name?  What’s she do?”

“Her name’s Mizzi.”

“Mizzi what?”

“I don’t know.  She’s a hod carrier.  She—­”

“That’s all right, Wallie.  I’m here now.  An ice bag on your head and real quiet for two-three days.  You’ll come round fine.”

But Wallie was almost sulking.  “Wait till you see her, S.H.  She sings.”

“Beautiful, is she?”

“No, not particularly.  No.”

“Wonderful voice, h’m?”

“N-n-no.  I wouldn’t say it was what you’d call exactly wonderful.”

Sid Hahn stood up in the droshky and waved his short arms in windmill circles.  “Well, what the devil does she do then, that’s so good?  Carry bricks!”