Adonis. They are all so many versions of the
old paradisiacal tradition, and will last side by
side with it while books endure.

Pleasant is it to think that the surface
of the globe is dotted all over with these
imaginary Edens; pleasanter still that, with the
aid of truth and affection, we may make our own
Terrestrial Paradise wherever four walls, however
humble, enclose the enchanted ground
called Home.

OPERATING FOR A RISE.

IN the most luxurious of rocking-chairs,
enjoying the cool sea-breeze of evening and the
cigarito of tranquillity under the leafy canopy
of a trellised vine, and contemplating the dark
green fig-trees and bananas of his garden, sat
the worthiest of Mexican hidalgos, Don Ramon
Redondo. To the careless observer he was a
picture of perfect and rather sensuous happiness,
so regular were the puffs of blue smoke from
his nostrils, and so calm was the gaze he
occasionally directed through a gap in the hedge
of prickly-pear towards the little harbour where
his own schooner, the pride of his heart and the
boast of all the inhabitants of the town, of
Milcarrambas, was lying at anchor, the tricolor
of the Republic proudly waving at her peak.
Everything around him spoke of peace; from
within the house, came the voices of his younger
children at play, and he could hear the hinnying
of the sleek mules, which he loved almost
as well, as they ate their allowance of maize in
the adjoining corral. Yet the heart of Don
Ramon was troubled, and beneath that deceptive
mask of dreamy apathy and apparent vacuity of
thought, a host of angry feelings occupied his
mind, and he was strongly inclined to believe
that in the whole state there could not be found
a gentleman less appreciated and worse treated
than himself. The main grievance affecting
him, and which had been the means of
introducing all the others to his notice, was not,
indeed, of a very overwhelming nature. It
consisted merely in the fact that, owing to its being
Good Friday, he not only had been compelled to
forego his morning chocolate, his mid-day breakfast,
and the plentiful and succulent evening
meal, but had been obliged to mock his glorious
appetite and endanger his valuable health with
one shadowy and uninviting repast of thin
corn-cakes and water—a fluid of which he
was not in the habit of consuming a great
quantity, although admitting its usefulness for
the irrigation of the soil and the purposes of
navigation. As a good Catholic, Don Ramon
ought to have borne all this with patience,
looking forward with pious cheerfulness to the
compensations of the morrow; but being a
philosopher without knowing it, like Titus,
though for a different reason, he brooded over
the thought that he had "lost a day."

There were many reasons, moreover, why the
strict letter of the law should have been relaxed
in his favour by the priest to whom he had been
generous; by his wife, also, of whom he stood
in much greater awe, and whom he deeply
suspected of having secretly granted to the juvenile
branches of the family that dietetic indulgence
which was denied to himself. And had he not a
right to it on several accounts? Was he not a
soldier—at least, had he not once commanded
the National Guard of Milcarrambas when the
American filibuster, Walker, made his daring, but
unsuccessful, attack on the town? Was he not
also a sailor, having several times made the
voyage to Acapulco on board his own vessel, the
Pepita? Above all, was he not an Invalid, or
in danger of becoming one; and were not
dispensations given by the most severe precisians
to persons in such circumstances? And what
right had his wife to complain that the daughters
of his rival and enemy, Don Juan Cachorro, had
appeared at church that day in more gorgeous
attire than the three lovely girls who bore the
name of Redondo? Also, how should he ever
be able to furnish to those daughters proper
dowers, since his fellow-citizens had seen fit to
deprive him of the rank and emoluments he had
long enjoyed as Political Chief of the town and
surrounding country, and to elevate the hated
Cachorro in his place. The rustling foliage of
the garden, and the tapering masts gently moving
with the rippling waves of the hill-encircled
harbour, had lost for the time all power to charm
his eye; care, and wounded self-love, divided
his heart; fierce hunger gnawed another and
not less important organ.

While he was moodily lighting his twentieth
cigarito from the last spark of its predecessor,
three persons entered the gate, whom Don
Ramon greeted, snappishly, as one who knew
that, unlike himself, they had been fortunate
enough to dine. His salutation was returned in
a friendly, though rather a ceremonious manner,
by Don Juan Smith and his two partners, Don
Tomaso Jones, and that most insinuating of
Frenchmen, M. Lecarottier—generally known in
Milcarrambas as Don Alfonso—the heads of the
most flourishing mercantile house in the place.

Those distinguished foreigners, after a few
preliminary observations, during which they
affect an easy air of having nothing particular
on their minds, enter at large on the follies and
misdeeds of the ruler of the town: a subject
greatly interesting to their listener.

"We want you again at the head of affairs.
You, as the greatest landholder and most
extensive shipowner on the coast, are regarded by
every one here as the natural leader of the party
of order."

Don Ramon is flattered, but remains silent.
The Gallic tempter takes up the tale, and
continues it in rather more fluent Spanish than
is at the command of his English associates.

"The people call out for you, Señor Redondo;
they know well that everything goes to ruin
while Cachorro governs. Industry and
commerce are at a stand-still, owing to the barbarous
manner in which the customs dues are collected.
Only think! At present we have a vessel signalled
in the offing with a cargo of English goods, which
are very much required here. We call upon Don