MELODRAMNATION
“Now Mr. Gallagher is satisfied.”
So says the Boston Post. The facts are these:
He is the chief of a theatric club,
And as he deems that he can melodram,
He melodrammed for it a mighty piece
Of thundering incidents and awful scenes,
Which called for just nine actors. And they all
Declared that each had got the worst and curst
Of all the parts, and that ’twas written thus
To boom the fame of selfish Gallagher;
So the first night they came upon the boards,
With hearts like hornets and with souls like snakes
And feeling like old pizen, all agog
To be revenged upon the common foe,
Who was to act the hero. Act the first:
The hero and his mother meet to part,
And on her shoulders and o’er all her bust
The parent had put pins by papersful,
Till she was like a frightful porcupine;
And when she pressed her darling to her breast,
The pins en masse entered his very soul,
And pricked his nose, and ran into his cheeks,
So that he howled; but his mamma held on,
Easing her heart with rapturous revenge
While agonizing his. In the next act
He was on shipboard, and ’twas in the plot
That he should be knocked down and cuffed about
By a most cruel captain; and, God knows,
The captain played that part most perfectly,
Since in the start he went for Gallagher
With a belaying-pin, and laid him out
Secundum artem, and then let him up,
Only to let into him twice as hot,
’Mid rapturous hurrahs. In the next act
The hero led the crew to mutiny,
And Gallagher was glorious; but just then
Some one let down the trap on which he stood,
And there he was, up to his waist in stage,
Unable to get up or to go down,
And thus they kept him in captivity
While all the audience guyed him. When he strove
To climb they lowered him, and when he sought
To dodge beneath they highered him again;
So he went up and down like Erie stock
Until the scene was shifted. In the next
He fought the villain of the play, and this
Was Mr. Hencoop Smith, a stalwart rogue,
Extremely high on muscle, and the way
He lathered Gallagher about the stage
Was Awful Gardener. And when Smith should cry,
“Forgive me—I am crushed!” and Gallagher
Replied, “I’ll have your life!” the hero lay
Under the table, while his adversary
Bemauled him with a chair-leg. It was o’er,
And Gallagher, all black and blue, went home
To plotter out revenge. On the next night
The piece was adverred to be played again,
And Gallagher sent round a messenger,
Who said he was too ill to play his part,
But he would send a substitute. He did—
A giant-like ferocious prize-fighter,
Under another name. And how he played!
He squeezed the mother into raving fits,
And jerked her wig away by accident,
And threw the cruel captain down the trap,
And larruped all the actors; and when Smith
Came on to fight, he took him by the heels
And mopped the stage with him until ’twas clean,
Then hurled him through the flat. All was a wreck:
And in the front seat sat the Gallagher
And laughed until he cried. Revenge is sweet!