ically clear sky. I did recall having glanced at a brief newspaper paragraph in the misspelled Spanish dialect used in Brazil, somewhere during my journey northward from Uruguay, to the effect that some prince of Austria and his consort had been killed at some town in Serbia of which I had never

heard; but I had known other assassinations of Europeans of high degree, even kings and emperors, to blow over without a war resulting. Squabbling was always going on in the Balkans, and surely there were princes enough over there, so that the loss of one or two should not greatly worry any one. The pessimists had it that there was going to be a long and a real war. In common with all the other wise men of the period I smiled condescendingly at the silly notion.

Yet here were very decided rumors of war. Maps were already appearing in the windows of newspaper offices, with scores of black- and red-headed pins on them to show the advance of the various armies. The flurry might not amount to much, but it was high time I turned my paper milreis into real money, bought my ticket, and got out of this temperamental country before something serious really did happen. I strolled on, and dropped into one of the countless "exchange" booths which flourish in and about the Avenida Central, and, handing out my

three hundred thousand reis, requested the man inside to hand me back twenty gold sovereigns. He looked at me scornfully, pointed to a small paragraph in the newspaper under my elbow, and went on painting a sign on a piece of cardboard. By these two announcements I learned the astounding news that the milreis, which had been rated fifteen to the English sovereign as far back as men with average memories could remember, had dropped overnight to twenty-three to the pound! In other words of the same profane nature, my hundred dollars had dwindled in a few hours, merely on the strength of a bit of news from squabbling Europe, to about seventy dollars. I refused to be "done" in that fashion. It was merely the familiar old trick of bankers, who were taking advantage of a temporary scare to rob the garden variety of mankind of their hard-won earnings. In a day or so honesty, or at least competition, would prevail, and my milreis would be worth more nearly their honest value again. I repocketed them, and decided to wait until the exchange moderated. I did wait, and two days later my seventy dollars were worth less than sixty!

It may seem ridiculous that a man with three hundred thousand in his pocket should worry, at least to those who do not know Brazil, her currency, her prices, and her profiteers. But I began to show mild signs of uneasiness. Not merely was the money I had saved by superhuman efforts to carry me home just calmly melting away in my pocket without so much as being touched, but before long even touching became unavoidable. In less time than it would have seemed possible a third of my miserable paper money

had disappeared, I scarcely knew where or when. Even if I got away at once now, I should have to go straight home without touching at Venezuela, and if I did not hurry, I should not even get home. I raced to the steamship offices. What a shock! Not only had the value of my money been cut in two, and a third of it been used up, but the price of steamship tickets had suddenly and mysteriously doubled, and only English gold was accepted. If I could have jumped upon a steamer that very day I could still have paid for a third-class passage home. But there was no boat due for three days, and there were very good chances that she would be several days late.

§ 2

Meanwhile, a "state of siege" and a twelve-day holiday were declared by the Government, so that even those who had money in the banks were no worse off than I, and as the value of the milreis went steadily downward, prices went sky-rocketing. Day after day I invaded every steamship office in Rio, without distinction as to race, color, or customary rascality; I took captive

ism over the root of evil, than I, who were quite as willing to do anything within the pale of respectability to reach "God's country."

I might, of course, have cabled home for passage money. There were probably one or two persons in my native land who had both the wealth and the confidence required to answer properly to such an appeal, but I had long since made it a point of honor that when I got myself in a hole I should get myself out again without screaming for a rope.

3

Psychologists as well as mere world roustabouts will probably admit that the more nearly a man is "busted," the more ready he is to "take a chance." I am evidently subject to the same laws as more respectable members of society. At any rate, when I got down to my last few milreis I grew bold, and instead of squeezing the last loaf of

bread out of each of them, I squandered what I had left in lottery-tickets. On the following Saturday there was to be a "drawing extraordinary," in which the first prize was to be nothing less than a hundred million reis! If only I would take the trouble to pick the right ticket, I should have no further worries about getting home; I might even buy a steamer for the trip if necessary. Besides, I wanted to know how it felt to be a multimillionaire, even though a multimillionaire in Brazil must still be very circumspect as to how he spends his money.

The lottery drawing was held down behind the main post-office of Rio. A crowd of chiefly collarless and rather vacant-faced men and women who for long years had been incessantly chasing that will o' the wisp called the winning number by buying a few "pieces" of ticket whenever possible were already gathered in and about the frontless shop when I reached it. No small number of them were quite evidently so carried away with visions of what they were going to do with their winnings when their lucky day came that they had played hooky and jeopardized their real source of income. Even I felt the subtle breath of hope, fed chiefly on ardent desire, which swept through the sour-scented throng as the formalities began. In real money and at normal exchange a hundred million reis reached the respectable sum of about $332,000, and even though Brazilian paper had dropped to half its pre-war value, though every "piece" of ticket pays a commission to the vender, and must bear the ubiquitous "consumption" tax in the form of a hundred-reis stamp, though the Government takes five per cent. of all large winnings, and loads

down the winner with so many other stamps, taxes, and grafts that it requires a lawyer to

dig him from under them, there would still remain at least the price of the bridal suite on any steamer plying the east coast of South America.

The deadly sameness of the process of drawing made the formality a soporific which, combined with the tropical heat and the fetid breath of the mul

titude, soon left me drowsily leaning against my compact neighbors. Time and again some insignificant prize was announced and set down by the scribes around the walls, until I began sleepily to wonder if the hundred million ball had inadvertently, to give the officials all possible benefit of the doubt, been left out of the urn. When at last the "cem contos de reis" was droned out by the wooden-voiced announcer in the same bored, monotonous tone with which he had often mentioned the equivalent of a dollar, my thoughts were wool-gathering, and it was not until a flutter went through the crowd that I recognized the significance of the announcement. I glanced at the ticket in my hand, then at the number on the whirligigs. Protector of the Penniless! They were the same-at least the first three numbers on them were! An African-pated blockhead of unusual height blotted the last two of

those on the platform out of my field of vision. I shouldered him aside like a mad bull, treading underfoot a few immediate bystanders. The surge of pleasure that was mounting my spine turned to angry disgust. The last two figures were not even near enough my own to give me the booby "approximation" prize. With my usual carelessness and stupidity I had bought the wrong ticket, and the glamour of being a multimillionaire faded to the real, but familiar, experience of being "dead broke" in a foreign land. My My disappointment was evidently widespread, for the tightly packed throng began instantly to ease off, and quickly melted away like molasses from a broken jug, so that by the time I reached the street there were hundreds of other glum-faced persons shuffling off it in both directions.

84

Hardly was my last milreis gone when the exchange improved, and Brazilian money went more than halfway back to normal. The newspapers of the capital were nothing if not unreliable. Rumors flew more thickly each day until all the nations of the earth, including my own, were reported to have entered the war, and as the papers of Rio rarely carried a single line of news from the United States, it was hard to distinguish rumor from fact. During the second week of August the incensed povo and scattered groups of populares paraded all over town, mobbing the stores that had raised the prices of food stuffs; before the newspaper offices were hung small samples of poor bread, placarded with the names of the shopkeepers who had sold them. Even the courts did not function, on account of the holiday,

and the Government was finally compelled to take advantage of the "state of siege" to punish the most flagrant cases of profiteering, and to publish a list of prices of food which could not be exceeded without loss of license and possible imprisonment. But the ways of the Brazilian are devious, and no great improvement was accomplished.

It was after three of a blazing afternoon that I rode on my street-car pass out to Ipanema, where I had discovered a mass of rocks with several little coves in which no bathing-suit was needed. There was a marvelous little private sand beach, and a rock-walled dressing-room where only a stray negro wench could see me if she chose to look, and from which I could just see the tips of the Corcovado and the "Sugar Loaf," and, across the turquoise bay, silhouetted at this hour against the sun side of the sky, boxshaped Gavea, hazy blue with distance; and all a swim cost me here was the time needed to ride out to it amid the peerless scenery of Rio and its environs.

I had ridden halfway back to town when I looked up from reading one of Brazil's epics called "O Uruguay," and caught sight of the back of a head that looked familiar. The hat above

it and the coat below I had certainly never seen before, and I could make out little of the face; but that little merely increased my conviction. By the time we had passed the tunnel I decided to make sure, and moving up

close behind the familiar head, I pronounced a name in a mild voice that would probably not have attracted any attention if the name was not the right one. The man turned around quickly, then thrust out a hand. As I had suspected, he was Raymond Linton, not only a fellow-countryman, but a fellow-statesman, whom I had last seen in Buenos Aires.

A year before Linton had acquired the Spanish-American concession for Edison's recently invented "Kinetophone," or "talkingmoving pictures,' and having played before all the uncrowned heads of Peru, Chile, Uruguay, and the Argentine, was still operating two separate outfits of this theatrical novelty in the last two of those countries. The entertainment had taken so well in Spanish America that he had purchased the rights for Brazil also, and having left Buenos Aires on the last day of July, little suspecting what the world had in store for itself, he was planning to start a third outfit in Rio de Janeiro.

"But I'm in tough luck," said Linton after our preliminary greetings and immediate personal history had ended.

"How come?" I asked rather idly, to tell the truth, for my thoughts were still chiefly on my own predicament.

"You remember my B.A. manager?"

he replied. "Splendid fellow and just the man I needed to handle the proposition up here in Brazil as soon as I get it started. But he is a Frenchman, and the day after I sailed he was called home to join the army. So now I've got to rush back to B.A. to keep that end going, and I have a brand-new outfit, with special films in Portuguese and a man fresh from the Edison plant, landing from the States to-day. This man knows all the mechanical and electrical part of the job to perfection, but he probably never heard of the Portuguese language, and could n't tell a Brazilian from an honest man. So I am mighty hard up for some one to take charge up here, and I don't know where on earth I 'll find him.

"By Jove!" he went on a moment later, as the street-car swung out upon the Beira Mar, "I wish you felt like staying down here six months or so longer; I 'd make you a proposition.”

"For instance?" I asked, entirely out of idle curiosity. "I will not spend another month in South America under any circumstances, but I may have to in spite of myself."

"If I could get a man who knows the South-American from spats to hair-oil as well as you should after three years with him,' with him," went on Linton in great earnestness, "I 'd offer him a salary and a percentage, guaranteeing that he would not get less than"-naming a considerably larger sum than I had ever been paid as a respectable member of society-"a month, with all actual traveling expenses, first class, paid, all arrangements to be in U. S. currency, to take charge of the Brazilian end of this business and play in every city in the country of over fifteen thousand population,-there are about fifty of them, and cover the