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artistic, and when the music ceases there are shouts of admiration and an "echo," which signifies encore.

The curtain slowly rises, and the silence of the desert and its scenes reign.

The American visitor naturally expects the opening scene of the opera billed for the night, but this unique Circolo is original in the arrangement of its programmethe opera comes after the love songs and duets. Sometimes there are love songs between the acts, and these have nothing to do with the opera. On nights when a tragedy and a comedy are substituted for opera, there are solos, and duets, and character sketches between the acts. Love is the one theme that pervades these airs. It is love, everywhere true and false, that which is given, and the stolen variety, which the gay world says is the sweetest. They tell of the peasant's love, of the love of the high born lady in the palace, in the medieval days when the troubadours sang; of love in the days of the Renaissance in the purer language of Dante, and of love in the Italy of to-day. All breathe the same grand, sweet passion of love -old as the world, yet ever new.

With the rise of the curtain Signorina Antonietta Pisanelli, the brightest star in the Circle, trips out upon the stage amid bursts of applause. She is prettily dressed in black, the dress cut decollete, revealing shapely shoulders and the bust of a model. Her Neapolitan cameo face is stamped with intellectuality and refinement. Heavy brows arch her piercing velvety eyes -as black as midnight, yet flashing with the brightness of the diamond -the kind that drive men crazy. A profusion of coal black hair heightens the beauty of her classic face, which now changes from smiles to sadness as she sings of her lover who is not. That is, she wants one -a really nice lover. Her complaint is that all the senorinas have a lover

and perhaps more, but she has not one. It would seem that one upon whom Nature has showered SO many gifts should have them by the score. Perhaps she desired an ideal that existed only in her imagination, and now wonders why her charmis have been overlooked. Thus she sings her palpitating heart away in "Sunniculi, Funnicula," which means "Love is Up, and Love is Down." The fickle passion is likened to riding up hill and down hill on an incline street car. With a swaying motion of the arms, she illustrates its progress and decline— "Up and Down, Down and Up," and so it goes. The point of the story is that Love is never stationary-it is always moving. It bursts into an undying flame and ever burns brightly, or gradually pales and smoulders into dead ashes. As the last sad strains die away, the audience, now in sympathy for the neglected senorina, loudly applaud, and shout "Echo! Echo!"

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She answers the encore with "Love and Kisses." Her face wreathed in smiles-the sadness has disappeared. She has evidently found a lover who understands his business, for she now tells all about love and kisses. It is a pretty, lively air, and is sung charmingly, with just enough coquetry to make it piquant and spicy. During its rendition there are sighs of "Ah!" and "A-h-h!" and sounds of imitation kisses from some of the love-smitten gallants. As a finishing touch, to add fuel to the flame, she coquettishly places the tips of her fingers to her full-rounded lips, and with a delicate sibilant noise, tosses a kiss. fresh and warm, to the audiencecatch it who can! Many echo the kiss, each believing that he has caught it by wireless telegraph. A man high up in the gallery is evidently hit hard, and expresses his relief in an owl-like hoot, which creates uproarious laughter. But it is only a stage kiss-and like the per

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Signora Eleana Cortis, Signore Cortis in casant courtship scene.

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fume of the rose, it is not for one -but for all.

After "Love and Kisses," Signorina Eleana Cortis bounds upon the stage to lively music and applause. She is dressed in black over white, the costume being decolette at both ends. She has beautiful hair, pretty black eyes. Her Roman face is brightened by a smile and her cheeks. are painted like rose buds. Her style is bewitchingly rapturous. The song calls for an emphatic stamp of the foot at the end of each stanza, and the appreciative auditors feel moved to join the refrain by stamping at the moment she emphasizes with her foot. A too appreciative man in the gallery used a board with such effect that the audience showed its lack of appreciation by hissing.

An amusing sketch entitled the "Music Lesson" is given by Signor ina Pisanelli and Signor Morelli.

This is a simple story, and an old one, seen every day and everywhere. The young pupil and her music teacher fall in love with each other, and they sing of love not in the score. In this instance the young Senorita is flirting with her teacher -she is merely making game of him to amuse herself.

Signor Cortis and Signorina Eleana Cortis appear in a character sketch portraying provincial life, dressed in the quaint costumes of the district. It is a bit of peasant life in a remote province, and is very amusing. The singing is charming. They answer the "echo" with a love duet which tells the simple story of every day love among the peasantry. The striped trowsers and round hat of the Signor seem exaggerated, but it is part of the costume of the swains of that province when they are out heart-smashing.

Signorina Antonietta Pisanelli, the one with the eyes, again appears. She wears the short dress of a peasant maid, which shows a shapely, arched little foot and crimson silk stockings with windows. The gailants smack their lips, thinking that they are to have more "Love and Kisses." But she sings the plaint of the maid who is sighing for her lover, and bids him "Come With Me!" Many of the smitten auditors. volunteer to go-even to the end of the world. The Signorina smiles and tosses her head as if rejecting all offers, and the Circolo echoes with laughter and applause. The owl-like hoot of the man in the gallery is no longer heard. Perhaps this voluptuous vision finished him on the spot.

The curtain falls-the lights are out. A few steps and the American visitor crosses the line from picturesque, romantic Italy, into the less romantic, ever hurrying, worrying and bustling American city.

Zona Growth of Trees and Plants

Progressively from North to South

Tiny Oaks of the Sierra Madres

BY J. E. CARNE

T is a curious fact, visible to the observant traveler, that trees and plants of the same family are often found indigenous both to the arctic and tropic zones, varying, however, greatly in size. To watch this progressive enlargement and growth is most interesting.

Take, for instance, the great family of cactus. On the lava desert of Snake River, Idaho, it is a most diminutive plant, just peeping above the ground, giving, however, large evidence of its latent possibilities, by sending out a vicious spine, long enough to impale the foot of the lightly moccasined Indian, as he chases the nimble-footed jack rabbit across the sage brush plain. In Mexico the same family attains a diameter of three feet, and are as tall as oaks and beeches.

The barrel cactus (from which a delicious candy is made), in Montana grows no larger than marbles, while in the far South it assumes great proportions, and often weighs half a ton. There is one at the little border town of Los Cruces, N. M., as big as a hundred gallon wine. cask.

The willow of Alaska is no thicker than the finger of a redshirted miner, who often vainly pulls and tugs at the slender twigs for hours to gather enough fire wood with which to cook his slap-jacks, while along the irrigating ditches of Old Mexico it grows large enough for a saw-log.

The mesquite, however, shows the

most progressive enlargement that I have observed. This bush or tree is, in appearance, not unlike a mimosa, and bears edible pods.

On the llanos of New Mexico and Arizona, this family is of the size of a graceful willow shrub; in Texas it attains greater dimensions, and often present the appearance of a young orchard growth in harvest and plucking time; whereas on the deserts of Sonora, Old Mexico, along the arroyos, it attains great size.

These arroyos during the long months of summer are dry water courses, with a level floor of crystalline sands of snow-white purity.

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A double colonnade of immense mesquites, with gnarled branches larger than a mountain oak, generally follow such favored spots, and with beautiful regularity form an avenue of green, upon white sands, that wind among the jungle hills, a long distance; often more than a day's journey on horseback. It appears more like a work of art than the spontaneous growth of nature, and forms one of the most pleasing features of this dry region.

This arch and canopy of mesquite, laced with clinging vines, flowers and pendant gourds, form the only shade in the desert. All other growth are but tall bushes, through which intrudes the level shafts of heated light, from scorching rays of tropic sun.

The Mexican desert is not, however, as the name might imply, a realm of stony hills and drifting

sand only, and devoid of vegetation, but instead is covered with the green of bush and flowering shrub, and climbing vines. The mesquite and cactus (the latter often small as a cucumber or tall as oaks) both flourish upon its arid surface.

Tiny Oaks of the Sierra Madres.

Leaving the dry districts of the South, where the reverberations of light rise in constant waves to dazzle the eye and fever the brain, we turn to the tops of mountains, high up among the cooling showers, and sleet, and snow; while their base, more firmly anchored, are deep. down amid the heat of volcanic stone.

Nature, generally so uniform in her dispensation, sometimes, however, reverses the established order of things, and in one particular instance exhibits caprice and waywardness, in that she dwarfs a product of the South while bestowing upon her Northern cousin great size, strength and beauty.

This is exemplified in a small oak of the Sierra Madre Mountains, the most diminutive of its species that grows.

These oaks, which make green the slopes of the Mexican Sierras, appear more like well-kept garden shrubs than trees with a name so ancient, a name which implies sturdy growth, dimensions, strength and vigor, and has ever been associated in our minds with the grandeur of moss-covered churches and ivy-grown fanes. Among the piny ridges and tree-covered slopes of the Sierra Madre Mountains, in those more open spaces where the sombre shadows of deep woods are changed to bright sunlight; where the pines are richly interspersed richly interspersed with juniper and the larger and broad-leaved oak, as they stand singly or in groups, with tall grasses that wave between, and pretty vistas and green aisles that melt into

the bushy forest maze, or sweep up to meet heaven's descending blue.

In such places these tiny oaks, the smallest of their kind, thrive and flourish. So diminutive are these pretty trees that when fully grown, most of them are of lesser height than the tall grasses that nod above their topmost boughs.

Park-like, they occur in copse and grove, and are as perfect in their grace and dignity of form as are their cousins of broader spread and larger growth. Each tree bears its yearly burden of plump acorns, and a quart (the measure of its harvest yield), bends the slender twigs to earth under the weight. Its acorn is nearly as large as that of oaks twenty times larger in girth.

Because of their tiny size, these botannical Lilliputs, ever green, seem better fitted to grace those artistic vases in which the Japanese dwarf their cypress trees, than to combat the elements amid mountain storms. The acorns which they bear are eagerly sought after by the wild turkey and white-tailed deer, which feed and grow fat on them, while the yellow-headed parrots scream and squabble among juniper berries, which grow in rich profusion all around.

On the lower reaches of the mountains, and sweeping up to their middle distance, larger oaks occur in noble forest growth of space and

numbers.

Another striking feature of the oak trees which embellish the parklike meadows of the Sierra Madres, and adorn with graceful beauty its gently-flowing ridges, is, that they are always in foliage and evergreen.

While the oaks of the North, of the same family and kind, shed their leaves with the first blustering wind of autumn, those of high altitudes in the South continue their green leaves fresh as in summer, all the year round; yet in a botannica! sense they are not an evergreen.

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