Note 29 — Chapter XVIII

Since the above was written, I have received the little “Gaceta de Costa Rica,” announcing the complete breaking up of Señor Serrate’s Company of Funambulos, in consequence of the death of “Tobillos Gruesos,” and of the girl who turned somersets. The first died of tetanus, or lockjaw, from a slight wound received by the unlucky turning of a knife used in some of her feats of dexterity; and the Volteadora, a martyr to her profession, broke her neck in an attempt to eclipse the “Eccentric Clown Simon.” I now feel some compunctions of conscience for my allusions to the Jovena’s ankles—they were really not so very large—and I mean to make amends, by thinking of her hereafter, not as “Tobillos Gruesos,” but as “La hermosissima Jovena Catalina.”