No. 160 Fulton Street,

Room No. 11, NEW YORK.

* * * * *

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.


AN ADAPTATION.


BY ORPHEUS C. KERR




CHAPTER XI.--(Continued.)


BLADAMS ushered in two waiters--one Irish and one German--who wore that
look of blended long-suffering and extreme weariness of everything
eatable, which, in this country, seems inevitably characteristic of the
least personal agency in the serving of meals. (There may be lands in
which the not essentially revolting art of cookery can be practiced
without engendering irritable gloom in the bosoms of its practitioners,
and the spreading of tables does not necessarily entail upon the actors
therein a despondency almost sinister; but the American kitchen is the
home of beings who never laugh, save in that sardonic bitterness of
spirit which grimly mocks the climax of human endurance in the burning