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with a charuto or cigar in his mouth, quietly waiting for his dinner.

'Good-day, grandfather,' said he.

The old man gazed at him without making any reply.

'I came to ask you, with all possible respect, if it was not by your direction that letters were sent a few days since to all my acquaintances, asking them to assist at my funeral?'

'Ah, jilho du ———!' instantly replied the irascible old man, 'you at last remember me! Are you not aware that a child who forgets his duty no longer exists to his parents? I will teach you good manners!' And seizing his cane, he darted at the unfortunate judge, who, anticipating some hostile demonstration, had not left the neighborhood of the door. The same day the criminal was set at liberty.

In the interior, justice is administered in a still more expeditious manner, Every one there acts for himself. If he has a personal affair to settle with one of his neighbors, he conceals himself near the road by which his adversary is to pass, sends a ball through him as soon as he gets within easy range, and returns to his cabin as quietly as though he had shot an armadillo, The urubus soon cause all trace of the crime to disappear, by picking the victim to pieces and scattering his bones. It sometimes happens that the dead man has relatives or friends who determine to avenge him. Divining, with the instinct of a wild animal, the source from whence the fatal blow proceeded, they in turn ambush their victim, and soon invite the urubus to another feast. The law of the wilderness is always eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and blood for blood, Instead of one murder there are two. But people are not so particular in a country where slavery exists, Besides, murderers have charming euphuisms to justify their conduct: they tell you that it was necessary to appease the angry soul of their unfortunate relative; that society demanded justice; and that they have only: sent the murderer before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge.

The freed negro is not much more considered than the slave by that blind divinity called justice,^[1] Nevertheless, the law gives him the right of voting at elections.

Since we are upon the subject, the reader may be curious to know how elections are carried on in Brazil. A single example will suffice to give an idea of the political education of the great South-American empire.

By the terms of the Brazilian Constitution, every free man who is not absolutely a beggar has the right, at certain periodical times, to cast into an urn, tastefully decorated with ribbons, a slip of folded paper. There, as everywhere else, are found two parties, classed under the denominations of Conservative and Opposition—the former earnestly defending the past, while the latter, with equal earnestness, talk of liberty and progress till at length they come into power, when they in turn defend the true ways of their predecessors with more zeal than even their former opponents. As everywhere else, too, the electoral multitude separates into camps, according as the word constituicão or Oppositião sounds best to their ears. In one of their elections, which I now forget, a ministerial candidate asked