Notice again how magnificently they manage an earthquake. Little more than a week ago a telegram, emanating from Tegucigalpa in Honduras, was published in the _New York Herald_. In this it was stated that "mail advices from Yetapan announced that a terrible earthquake had occurred in that section of the country." There were elaborate details. Three hundred persons perished. Four thousand people from the outlying villages flocked into the city. During the night "sheets of flame appeared at different points in the north-west rising to immense heights. A church tower crashed down, carrying with it the roofs of three houses. Just before daylight a prolonged shock rocked the entire town as though it were a cradle, and on the mountain side quantities of grazing cattle were engulfed by lava. At Covajunca thirty-seven houses were laid in ruins: at Cayuscat twenty-nine houses collapsed. A later despatch states that 353 bodies have already been recovered." In short, this earthquake was carried out in a style of lavish completeness, and no expense was spared to make it a record convulsion. It is unnecessary to add that it never happened. There wasn't a single quake in the whole of Honduras. Like _Falstaff's_ assailants, and like the highwaymen that waylaid Mr. RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, it wore a suit of buckram. And of all qualities of buckram the American is unquestionably the best.
It appears, moreover, that CAIN and ABEL lived in Central America, and that the mausoleum of ABEL is still to be seen in Yucatan, with all the inscriptions complete. Somehow or other a migration to Egypt then took place, and the Sphinx was erected by ABEL'S widow as a monument to her murdered husband. All this has been discovered by M. LE PLONGEON; and, to confirm the truth of the story, Mr. W. T. STEAD is to publish it, bound in buckram, of course. "JULIA'S" share in this discovery is not stated, but there can be no doubt that she must have been hovering round.
I am told that Cheshire cheese is in a bad way; that the price of it has fallen so much as to make the total disappearance of Cheshire cheese extremely likely. At the same time it is said that Cheshire cheese is going down because the farmers wilfully produce an inferior article. It may be so, though I hope it is not. But if it is, why delay the punishment? To produce inferior cheese is as bad as robbery with violence; and a dozen or so with a Cheshire cat ought to prove an effective deterrent to the most hardened offender.