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قراءة كتاب Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870

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‏اللغة: English
Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870

Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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TO TIE IN A DOUBLE BOW-KNOT!"






BY GEORGE!

(Concluded.)

LAKE GEORGE, N. Y., Sept. 12.

DEAR PUNCHINELLO: "SLUKER," continued the long-haired man in an absent-minded manner, "was a corker! there is no mistake about that.

Like the Ghost at BOOTH'S, he was a terror to the peaceful Hamlet. He was always getting up shindys without the slightest provocation, and was evidently possessed of the unpleasant ambition, as well as ability, to whale the entire township in detachments of one.

Things got to be so bad after a while that the bark was rubbed off every tree in town on account of the people incontinently shinning up them whenever SLUKER came in sight.

It was no unusual thing to see business entirely suspended for hours, while SLUKER marched up and down the main street, whistling, with his hands in his pockets, and every soul in the place, from the minister down, roosting as high as they could get, six on a branch, sometimes.

Matters went on in this way until one day a little incident occurred that somewhat discouraged this gentle youth. He had just returned from a discussion with a butcher, (from the effects of which the latter now sleeps in the valley,) when a party of his fellow-townsmen entered the store in which he was loafing, and ordered a coil of half-inch rope from New York by the morning's train.

It was the Overland route that SLUKER took for California, and when his aged mother heard that three eyes had been gouged out in one day in the Golden City, she wept tears of joy. Her fond heart told her that the perilous journey was over, and her darling boy was safe.

After ten years of a brilliant career he bethought him again of the place of his birth. His heart yearned for the gentle delights,—the heavy laden trees—of his boyhood's home. He said he must go.

His friends said he must go, too. In fact they had already appointed a select and vigilant Committee to see him safely on his way.

In some respects SLUKER came back an altered man. The stamp of change was on his noble face, indeed it had been stamped on itself, until it looked like a wax doll under a hot stove. But he still retained his warlike spirit.

There was not so much chance of indulging it now, however. The Fire Company had disbanded, and nearly every one had grown rich enough to own a shot-gun. There was only one chance left.

He joined the Presbyterian Choir.

Not that he had much of a voice, though he used to play 'Comin' thro' the Rye' oh the fiddle sometimes, until he got it going through him so much he couldn't draw a note.

Nobody would have taken them if he had.

Well, SLUKER had a pretty warm time of it in the Choir, and enjoyed himself very much, until they got a new Organist who pitched every thing in 'high C,' which was this young man's strong lead.

As the Choir always sang in G, of coarse, there was a row the first Sunday, and it was generally understood that SLUKER was going to fix MIDDLERIB that night.

When the evening service commenced, and the Choir was about to begin, the congregation were startled by an ominous click in the gallery, and looking up, they beheld SLUKER covering the Organist's second shirt-stud with his revolver.

"Give us G, Mr. MIDDLERIB, if you please!" he said blandly.

But the pirate on the high C's refused to Gee, and Whoa was the natural result.

The confusion that followed was terrible: SLUKER fired at everybody. MIDDLERIB hit him with the music stool. The soprano was thrown over the railing, and somebody turned off the gas.

In the ensuing darkness every one skirmished for themselves. SLUKER took off his boots and hunted for MIDDLERIB in his stocking feet.

Suddenly he heard a single note on the 'high C.' He groped his way to the keyboard, but there was no one there.

The solution rushed upon him,—MIDDLERIB must be in the organ.

He crept round to the handle and bore his weight on it.

It was too true; the unhappy wretch had cut a hole in the bellows and crawled in. But for his ruling passion he would have escaped.

There were a few muffled groans as the handle slowly descended upon the doomed man, and as the breath rushed out of his body into his favorite pipe, the wild 'high C of agony that ran through the sacred edifice told them that all was over.

Let us draw a vail over the horrid picture."

*       *       *       *       *

I was very much interested in this story, very much indeed, and so I jostled the long-haired man—who was about falling asleep—and asked him if anything was done to this wicked SLUKER.

He looked at me reproachfully. "What's the matter with you, my friend?" he said, in the same melancholy voice. "Don't you know who I am? I write for the Ledger, and whenever 'I draw a vail, etc.,' that ends it, that does!"

As we stepped from the steamer to the landing, I observed a youth of about six summers dressed in the most elaborately agonizing manner. He had two Schutzenfest targets in his cuffs; in one hand he held an enormous cane, in the other a cigar, and through an eyeglass he gazed at the ankles on the gang-plank with an air of patient weariness with this slow old world that was very touching.

"Where," I exclaimed as I surveyed this show-card of a fast generation, "O! where have our children vanished? Take from childhood the sparkling water of its purity—the sugar of its innocent affections—its ardent but refreshing spirits—and what, ah! what have we left?"

"Nothing," said the melancholy voice at my elbow. "Absolutely nothing save the mint and the straw!"

And he was right, my dear PUNCHINELLO, he was right.

SAGINAW DODD.






"SOLEMN SILENCE."

Perhaps very few persons—and especially very few members of the Republican party—are aware that a monument to ABRAHAM LINCOLN has at last been completed, and that it has been placed on the site allotted for it in Union Square. It is very creditable to the Republican Party that they exercised such control over their feelings when the day for unveiling the LINCOLN Monument arrived. Some parties might have made a demonstration on the occasion of post-mortuary honors being accorded to a leader whom they professed to worship while he lived, and whom they demi-deified after his death. No such extravagant folly can be laid at the door of the Republican Party. "Let bygones be bygones" is their motto. They allowed their "sham ABRAHAM," in heroic bronze, to be hoisted on to his pedestal in Union Square in solitude and silence. That was commendable. A live ass is better than a dead lion; and so the Republican Party, who consider themselves very much alive, went to look after their daily thistles and left their dead lion in charge of a policeman.






THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.

LOTTA is lithe; (which is alliterative,) pretty, piquant, and addicted to the banjo. The latter characteristic is inseparable from her. In whatever situation the dramatist may place her, whether in a London drawing-room or a Cockney kitchen, whether on an Algerian battle-field or in a California mining-camp, she is certain to produce the inevitable banjo, and to sing the irrepressible comic song. In fact, her plays are written not for LOTTA, but for LOTTA'S banjo. The dramatist takes the presence of the banjo as the central fact of his drama, and weaves his plot around it. His play is made on the model of that celebrated drama written to introduce Mr. CRUMMLES'S pump and tubs. Thus does he preserve the sacred unity of LOTTA and the banjo.

Heart's Ease—in which she is now playing at NIBLO'S Garden, is plainly born of the banjo, and lives for that melodious instrument alone. The author said to himself, "A California mining-camp would be a nice place for a banjo solo." Wherefore he conceived the camp, with a chorus of red-shirted miners. Wherefore too, he created a comic Yankee who should be eccentric enough to bring a banjo to the camp, and a lover who should be charmed by its touching strains. It required a prologue and three acts to enable him to successfully introduce the banjo. In a somewhat condensed form, these acts and this prologue are here set forth.

PROLOGUE. A seedy husband who is audaciously palmed upon the public as a Reasoning Animal is discovered in a London garret, with a healthy-looking wife, in a rapid consumption.

REASONING ANIMAL. "I loved you, my dear, and therefore brought you from a comfortable home to this dreary garret. I cannot bear to leave you, so I will go out for a walk." (The bell rings, and the wife's mother, brother and family physician enter.)

MOTHER. "You must leave your husband and come home and live with us."

BROTHER. "Of course you must. You need not hesitate about a little thing like that. Go into the other room and consult the Doctor. Here comes your husband." (Re-enter REASONING ANIMAL.)

REASONING ANIMAL. "Her berrotherr! Herre!"

BROTHER, "Yes. You can't support your wife. The Doctor says she needs nice parties and other necessaries of life. Give her to us, and go to California."

REASONING ANIMAL. "I will. Bring her here till I embrace her. (She is brought.) Farewell, my dear. I will go and make my fortune."

WIFE. "Take our little girl with you."

REASONING ANIMAL. "I will, for she needs a mother's care. Good-bye! Leave me to weep and wash the baby's face and hands alone."

ACT I.—Scene, a California mining-camp. Various miners of assorted nationalities—one of each—hard at work lying on the ground.

1ST MINER. "I want more whiskey."

CHORUS. "So do we."

2ND MINER. "MAY WILDROSE won't sell any more."

CHORUS. "But she gives it to her lover."

3RD MINER. "He looks clean; he must have found a nugget. Let's kill him."

4TH MINER. "Sh—we will." (Enter MAY WILDROSE—which her name it is MISS LOTTA.)

MAY. "Here comes my darling LIONEL. Let me get you some brandy, love."

LIONEL. "Certainly, my dear. How full of forethought is a true woman's love!"

CHORUS of MINERS. "She gives it to him, but not to us. Beware, young woman, or we will go back on you."

MAY. "No you won't. My father earns a laborious living by making me keep a whiskey shop. We have a monopoly of the business, and you will have to buy of us, whether you like it or not. Get out of my sight, or I'll lick the whole boiling of you." (They fly, and she returns to the parental whiskey shop.)

LIONEL. "Night is coming on. I will go among the rocks; why, I don't know, but still I will go." (Goes. Three miners follow and attack him.)

LIONEL. "Save me, somebody."

MAY. Appearing suddenly with a revolver—"You bet." (She shoots the miners and brings down the curtain triumphantly.)

ACT II.—Scene—the whiskey shop of the REASONING ANIMAL.—LIONEL asleep on a bed evidently borrowed from some boarding-house—since it is several feet too short for him.—MAY engaged in peeling potatoes.—Enter REASONING ANIMAL.

REASONING ANIMAL. "My daughter! I see you are passionately in love with LIONEL. Therefore, as I know him to be a fine young fellow, you must never see him more." (Enter COMIC YANKEE.)

COMIC YANKEE. "Here's your new banjo, Miss MAY. Play us something comic and depressing."

MAY. "Thank Heaven, I can get at the banjo at last" (Plays and is encored a dozen times.)

COMIC YANKEE. "Miss MAY, you must go and take a walk." (She goes.) "LIONEL, you are well enough to leave this ranche. Get up and get."

LIONEL. "Farewell, beloved whiskey shop. Tell MAY I am going to leave her, and give her my sketches. If she once looks at them, she can love me no longer." (Goes out to slow music. Re-enter MAY.)

MAY. "The wretch has left me without a word. I will bury his infamous sketches under the floor. They may frighten away the rats." (Pulls up the floor and finds an immense nugget. Her father rushes in to see it. Two miners also see it and try to raise it. They are promptly seen and called by MAY, who shoots one and holds the pistol pointed at the other, while the curtain slowly falls.)

ACT III.—Scene, a London drawing-room. Enter MAY, gorgeously dressed. Also her father, who has forgotten all about his wife, and also LIONEL and the COMIC YANKEE.

COMIC YANKEE. "Let us sing."

MAY. "Come on, old hoss." (They sing and dance for an hour, such being the pleasant custom of fashionable London society.)

MAY. "Miss CLARA! I understand you are engaged to marry LIONEL, and that if you marry anybody else you lose your dower of twenty thousand pounds. Sell LIONEL to me, and I will give you a check for the amount."

CLARA. "Thanks, noble stranger, there is the receipt. Hand over the money."

LIONEL. "Dearest MAY, as you must have a pretty large bank account, to be able to draw checks for twenty thousand pounds, I am quite sure I love you."

MAY. "Come to my arms. Now then, everybody, how is that for high!" (Slow curtain, relieved by eccentric gymnastics by the COMIC YANKEE.)

BOY IN THE AUDIENCE. "Pa! isn't that splendid?"

DISCRIMINATING PARENT. "What! How! Who! Where am I? O, to be sure, I came to see Heart's Ease, and to take my evening nap. Did LOTTA play the banjo?"

BOY. "O didn't she just. She played and sung dead loads of times."

DISCRIMINATING PARENT. "I have had a sweet nap. My son, I think I can now risk taking you to the minstrels. If I slept through this, I could feel reasonably sure of sleeping through even the dark conundrums and sentimental colored ballads. There is only a shade of difference between the two styles of performance, and that slight shade is only burnt cork."

MATADOR.






Mural Decorations in Rome.

The "dead walls" of Rome, as we learn from the telegrams, were lately placarded with immense posters proclaiming the Italian Republic.

Rome being an "Eternal City," we were not previously aware that any of her walls were dead. If they are, however, it may be that the posters of the posters referred to took that method of bringing them to life again, which may be looked on as a post mortem proceeding.







THE RETORT COURTEOUS.

Newly-arrived Briton. "ENGLISH SPARROWS?—IMPOSSIBLE. WHY, THEY CHIRP THROUGH THEIR LITTLE NOSES LIKE WEGULAR YANKEES."

Park-Keeper. "WELL, I DON'T KNOW, BUT IT TAKES TWO MEN AND A CART, EVERY DAY TO REMOVE THE 'Hs' DROPPED BY THEM ABOUT THE PARK."






OUR PORTFOLIO.

PARIS, FIRST WEEK OF THE REPUBLIC, 1870.

DEAR PUNCHINELLO: Things are becoming so mixed here that I am thinking of retiring to Tours with the other tourists. The city is all on the go—that is to say, the non-combatants are all going out of it as fast as possible.

GAMBETTA left here the early part of the week, and it was better for him that he should. I wouldn't give a sou for any of these republicans if they chance to fall into the clutches of King WILLIAM. It is reported that he has issued an order for the strangulation of all French children between the ages of three and five, in reprisal for the treacherous blowing up of Germans at Laon.

BISMARCK has requested the privilege of cooking ROCHEFORT'S mutton for him, should he be taken alive when Paris falls. What he means by "cooking his mutton" has not yet transpired, but it is gloomily

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