Mr. Troubadour Ambleleg was a tenor. He waved his light voice for a light salary in the chorus of an unexpensive opera company that made the summer months of 1881 and the opera air of the West End of St. Louis melodious to a sometimes quite harassing degree. His soul was as full of art as his throat was of music. He doted upon the beautiful wherever he came in contact with it, and frequently, when he heard of beauty lying around in languid looseness in any direction, he went out of his way to find it. It was in this manner he became acquainted with Miss Silica Justaytine. She was the belle of an upperly upper circle, a glowing, brown-eyed maiden, with sun-kissed hair, and the sweetest smiles that ever played in Polar-light style over the ruffs and ruchings of an expensive toilet. Indeed, an aurora borealis of glinting good nature shone upon the horizon of her lips, and a single glance of her eye was worth more to a man in love than the advent of a sprinkling cart to a traveller perishing of thirst on a dry and burning desert. When Mr. Ambleleg saw Miss Justaytine, that pink of beauty and perfection of belleship, gracing a front bench, where the susceptible tenor was nightly airing his voice at a salary of ten dollars a week, their eyes met and their loves at once intertwined. Like Tecetl, the daughter of Montezuma, who found in the yellow-haired warrior, Alvarado, the lover she had dreamt of long before the prow of the "fair god's" vessel touched the shores of Mexico, the super-Æsthetical maiden of my story saw in the chorus singer the affinity for which she had long looked and sighed. Mr. Ambleleg, too, at once became aware that in Miss Justaytine he had met his fate. They smiled, and sighed, and ogled, and encouraged each other across the foot-lights. The chorus singer forgot all the other maiden beauty that flourished under the foliage, and there were crushed and trampled hearts lying in the chasm across which Ambleleg and Miss Justaytine exchanged their affections. But Ambleleg did not mind it. He had learned that Miss Justaytine was the queen of her circle, and he determined to share her crown with her. Now, Ambleleg was not wealthy; neither was he rich in prepossessing features. His teeth were freckled, his mouth was big, his forehead small, his eyes expressionless, his hair of a buttery yellow, his moustache vapid, his shirt calico, and usually required to do long service without washing, while his general appearance was not extravagantly pleasant, and certainly not over-abundant in that grace and ease for which pretty girls have, at all times, a fondness. Therefore, it was surprising that Miss Silica Justaytine fell in love with the chorus-singing tenor. But she did so, and, it seems, fell so deeply into admiration of himself and his voice, that she could not have done better had she made the start, in falling, from the top of a seven-story house. When love is once kindled in the glow of a pair of admiring eyes, look out for a conflagration in the neighborhood of the pericardium. Night after night, as the moon washed the tree tops with waves of silver, and the leaves rustled their whispers to each other, Miss Silica Justaytine sat in the front row, either joining with the chorus of Æsthetic maidens in "Patience" in singing to her own ideal Bunthorne,—

Or following Bettina through the mazes of the "Mascotte" gobble song, while she had a Pippo of her own in mind all the time. Ambleleg noticed this growing affection, and sang all the louder, and all the wilder, to the great endangerment of the performances. At last Miss Silica Justaytine left him a token of her love—a soft, white rose, which she kissed and placed in her chair as she departed one evening. Ambleleg cleared the stage at a bound, secured the creamy flower, pressed it to his lips and over his calico shirt bosom, after which he carefully stowed it away in a pocket-book with his wash and board-bills. The following day Miss Silica Justaytine was toying with a $10,000 necklace in the bay window of her palatial residence on Pinafore Avenue, when the postman handed her a letter in a yellow envelope. It was from Ambleleg. She blushed as she looked at it, then opened and read it, smiled and floated gracefully up to an escritoire, where she indited a charming little note on pink monogram paper with heavy gold edges, and placed it in one of the nattiest and most scrumptious envelopes you ever saw. Ambleleg read that note that very night to a group of wide-eyed and open-mouthed chorus singers. It invited him to call on Miss Justaytine the next day. The call was made. Miss Silica Justaytine received Ambleleg at the front door, and led him to the magnificent parlor as graciously as if he were a prince. "My Pippo!" she cried, as she flung her arms around his neck, and almost knocked over the piano stool.

"My Bettina!" sighed the tenor, as he pressed her to his glowing bosom.

After the first agony of meeting they sat down and told the stories of their love. Cruel fate had dealt harshly with both. One was already engaged to be married; the other would not begin to have a ghost of a show at monogamy if wives were to be had at ten cents a dozen. Miss Justaytine was betrothed to Mr. Praymore, a young man who had hopes of coming into a fortune some day or other, providing he survived the parent who accumulated it. Mr. Ambleleg was impecunious; still she said she could scrape up enough to buy him a suit of clothes and a box of tooth-powder, and then they might fly together as far as East St. Louis anyhow. Miss Justaytine was to become a wandering minstrel's bride. She took the $5,000 diamond engagement ring Mr. Praymore had given her, from her finger, and put on a $2 imitation amethyst that the chorus singer gave her. What simple, pure, and unselfish love.

But the course of true love is as rough as the rocky roads in Dublin. Not content with wandering under his inamorata's window every night wasting his breath in whistling Sullivan's music to pieces, while Bettina opened the shutters of the third-story window and softly sang,—

to which Pippo melodiously responded,—

After which there was a mixture of "gobble, gobble, gobble," and "ba-a-a-ahs." Not content with this innocent and artistic way of amusing himself while he kept people awake for blocks around, Ambleleg very indiscreetly boasted of his success, and exhibited Miss Silica Justaytine's notes and photographs to indiscriminate crowds. One day he met Mr. Praymore and a prize-fighting brother of Miss Justaytine in the street. This brother had done yoeman's service in the 24-foot ring, and required but slight provocation to disturb the claret in a nose so inviting as that which decorated the middle of Mr. Ambleleg's face. By the free use of whiskey punches these young men finally inveigled Ambleleg into a deep and dark cellar where they proceeded to touch him up with fists and feet that he might not be able to identify himself again. After materially spoiling his appearance, they made themselves presents of the photographs and letters which they found in his possession, gave him a few parting touches, and then went away to prepare an official statement of their side of the case. Ambleleg now had no more use for the Justaytine mansion, or the Justaytine beauty, so he made up his mind to heal his heart and his bruises with a $10,000 balm. For this purpose he went into court. Miss Silica had winged herself away to the Rosebud Sulphur Springs, and was not aware of the fame herself and her chorus singer were achieving at home. Ambleleg hired him two lawyers to plead his cause, and then there was a great uproar all over the country. The papers busied themselves about the matter very much, and impudently published all the details that they could get hold of. Quite natural it was that when Miss Silica Justaytine arrived at the Rosebud Sulphur Springs, the fashionable and celebrated beauties there should be so jealous of her triumph over a chorus singer, that they were sparing of their attentions and cutting in their remarks. Some of the same envious ones had had food for gossip a season or two before over Miss Silica Justaytine's capture of a $15,000,000 ex-Presidential candidate. That a woman should range all the way from a Presidential candidate to a chorus singer, was unusual and interesting. So unpleasant did the gossiping souls at Rosebud Sulphur Springs make it for Miss Silica Justaytine, that she hastened back to the more congenial atmosphere of her home on Pinafore Avenue. In the meantime, her prize-fighting brother and Mr. Praymore had, with the same courage that impelled them to decoy Mr. Ambleleg into a cellar, and beat him, and draw a Gatling gun on him, fallen down on their knees before Miss Silica Justaytine and asked her to plead their cause. She consented, and by a swift-footed courier sent Ambleleg a message accompanied by the talismanic words, "Pippo" and "Amethyst." He stopped smoking a five-cent cigar and rushed out to the Justaytine mansion like a fire-engine pursued by an insurance man. His lawyer seized his coat-tail and followed, the two arriving there out of breath, the one bent on money, the other called by the sweet voice of love.

"Oh, Pippo!"

"Oh, Bettina!"

This was the salutation that fell from the two lovers as their eyes melted into each other.

"Pippo, you have sued my prize-fighting brother and my ostensible lover for $10,000. They are short of cash just now and cannot conveniently pay. Please cut down the amount just a little bit, dear Pippo. For the sake of this amethyst (shows him the ring) I beg of you cut it down," said she.

"I'll cut it down, Bettina," he said, "but I do it only for your sweet dear sake."

"How much?" she asked. "All I want," he answered, "is enough to buy a silver watch, a new suit of clothes, pay my board and wash bill, get me three cigars for ten cents, and take me home to my mother. I think I can get along with $500."

"Is that all?" the charming and delighted creature inquired.

"Not quite all," put in Ambleleg; "the two lawyers I have hired cannot be assuaged with less than $500. We three—that is, the two lawyers and myself—want $500 apiece. Thus you see I cut the $10,000 down $8,500," and he jammed his thumbs into the arm-holes of his vest and assumed the attitude of a man who could lose that amount in a game of poker every day in the week and never feel the loss.

"Oh, Pippo, you are so good to reduce so liberally," said Miss Justaytine, and she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him in a wild and irresponsible way.

Thus the interview ended, and as Ambleleg ambled down the front steps Miss Silica Justaytine sat down at her piano, ecstatically thrummed it and enthusiastically sang:—

The lawyers subsequently fixed the matter up among themselves, and Ambleleg, after getting a few dollars and a new pair of heavy-soled shoes, struck out nobly for the home of his mother. When last heard from he still had a good chorus voice and was helping to fill in the intervals of comic opera with his low and gentle howl.