On the occasion of the tenth biennial¹ visit of the Carlo Da Capo Grand Opera Combination to the musical, if murky², city of Smutchester, the principal members of the company pitched their tents, as was their wont³, at the Crown Diamonds Hotel, occupying an entire floor of that capacious caravanserie, whose chef, to the grief of many honest British stomachs and the unrestrained joy of these artless children of song, was of cosmopolitan⁴ gifts, being an Italian-Spanish-Swiss-German. Here prime donne, tenors⁵, and bassos could revel⁸ in national dishes from which their palates had long been divorced, and steaming masses of yellow polenta, knüdels, and borsch, heaped dishes of sausages and red cabbage, ragouts of cockscombs and chicken-livers, veal⁹ stewed¹⁰ with tomatoes, frittura of artichokes, with other culinary delicacies¹¹ strange of aspect and garlicky as to smell, loaded the common board at each meal, only to vanish like the summer snow, so seldom seen but so constantly referred to by the poetical¹² fictionist, amidst a Babel of conversation which might only find its parallel in the parrot-house at the Zoo. Ringed hands plunged¹³ into salad-bowls; the smoke of cigarettes went up in the intervals¹⁴ between the courses; the meerschaum-colored lager of Munich, the yellow beer of

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