but upon the city that encourages and sustains such wholesome and instructive entertainments.  We would simply suggest that the practice of vulgar young boys in the gallery of shying peanuts and paper pellets at the tigers, and saying “Hi-yi!” and manifesting approbation or dissatisfaction by such observations as “Bully for the lion!” “Go it, Gladdy!” “Boots!” “Speech!” “Take a walk round the block!” and so on, are extremely reprehensible, when the Emperor is present, and ought to be stopped by the police.  Several times last night, when the supernumeraries entered the arena to drag out the bodies, the young ruffians in the gallery shouted, “Supe! supe!” and also, “Oh, what a coat!” and “Why don’t you pad them shanks?” and made use of various other remarks expressive of derision.  These things are very annoying to the audience.

“A matinee for the little folks is promised for this afternoon, on which occasion several martyrs will be eaten by the tigers.  The regular performance will continue every night till further notice.  Material change of programme every evening.  Benefit of Valerian, Tuesday, 29th, if he lives.”

I have been a dramatic critic myself, in my time, and I was often surprised to notice how much more I knew about Hamlet than Forrest did; and it gratifies me to observe, now, how much better my brethren of ancient times knew how a broad sword battle ought to be fought than the gladiators.

CHAPTER XXVII.

So far, good.  If any man has a right to feel proud of himself, and satisfied, surely it is I. For I have written about the Coliseum, and the gladiators, the martyrs, and the lions, and yet have never once used the phrase “butchered to make a Roman holiday.”  I am the only free white man of mature age, who has accomplished this since Byron originated the expression.

Butchered to make a Roman holiday sounds well for the first seventeen or eighteen hundred thousand times one sees it in print, but after that it begins to grow tiresome.  I find it in all the books concerning Rome—­and here latterly it reminds me of Judge Oliver.  Oliver was a young lawyer, fresh from the schools, who had gone out to the deserts of Nevada to begin life.  He found that country, and our ways of life, there, in those early days, different from life in New England or Paris.  But he put on a woollen shirt and strapped a navy revolver to his person, took to the bacon and beans of the country, and determined to do in Nevada as Nevada did.  Oliver accepted the situation so completely that although he must have sorrowed over many of his trials, he never complained—­that is, he never complained but once.  He, two others, and myself, started to the new silver mines in the Humboldt mountains—­he to be Probate Judge of Humboldt county, and we to mine.  The distance was two hundred miles.  It was dead of winter.  We bought a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred