THE DANGER OF MIXED DRINKS.
The singer should have a great command of facial expression, which he will find greatly facilitated by employing (as indeed is the usual custom) coloured limelight at the wings.
First Verse (to be sung under pure white light).
He (these awful examples are usually, and quite properly, anonymous) was once as nice a fellow as you could desire to meet,
Partial to a pint of porter, always took his spirits neat;
Long ago a careful mother's cautions trained her son to shrink
From the meretricious sparkle of an aërated drink.
Refrain (showing the virtuous youth resisting temptation. N.B. The refrain is intended to be spoken through music. Not sung.)
Here's a pub that's handy.
Liquor up with you?
Thimbleful of brandy?
Don't mind if I do.
Soda-water? No, Sir.
Never touch the stuff.
Promised mother—so, Sir.
(With an upward glance.)
'Tisn't good enough!
Second Verse. (Primrose light for this.)
Ah, how little we suspected, as we saw him in his bloom,
What a demon dogged his footsteps, luring to an awful doom!
Vain his mother's fond monitions; soon a friend, with fiendish laugh,
Tempts him to a quiet tea-garden, plies him there with shandy-gaff!
Refrain (illustrating the first false step).
Why, it's just the mixture
I so long have sought!
Here I'll be a fixture
Till I've drunk the quart!
Just the stuff to suit yer.
Waiter, do you hear?
Make it, for the future,
Three parts ginger-beer!
Third Verse (requiring violet-tinted slide).
By-and-by, the ale discarding, ginger-beer he craves alone.
Undiluted he procures it, buys it bottled up in stone.
(The earthenware bottles are said by connoisseurs to contain liquor of superior strength and quality.)
From his lips the foam he brushes—crimson overspreads his brow.
To his brain the ginger's mounting! Could his mother see him now!
Refrain (depicting the horrors of a solitary debauch poisoned by remorse).
Shall I have another?
Only ginger-pop!
(Wildly.) Ah! I promised mother
Not to touch a drop!
Far too much I'm tempted.
(Recklessly.) Let me drink my fill!
That's the fifth I've emptied—
Oh, I feel so ill!
[Here the singer will stagger about the boards.
Fourth Verse. (Turn on lurid crimson ray for this.)
Next with drinks they style "teetotal" he his manhood must degrade;
Swilling effervescent syrups—"ice-cream-soda," "raspberry-ade,"
Koumiss tempts his jaded palate—payment he's obliged to bilk—
Then, reduced to destitution, finds forgetfulness in—milk!
Refrain (indicating rapid moral deterioration).
What's that on the railings?
[Point dramatically at imaginary area.
Milk—and in a can!
Though I have my failings,
I'm an honest man.
[Spark of expiring rectitude here.
I can not resist it. [Pantomime of opening can.
That celestial blue!
Has the milkman missed it? [Melodramatically.
I'll be missing too!
Fifth Verse (in pale blue light).
Milk begets a taste for water, so comparatively cheap,
Every casual pump supplies him, gratis, with potations deep;
He at every drinking-fountain pounces on the pewter cup,
Conscious of becoming bloated, powerless to give it up!
Refrain (illustrative of utter loss of self-respect).
"Find one straight before me?"
Bobby, you're a trump!
Faintness stealing o'er me—
Ha—at last—a pump!
If that little maid 'll
Just make room for one,
I could grab the ladle
After she has done.
The last verse is the culminating point of this moral drama:—The miserable wretch has reached the last stage. He shuts himself up in his cheerless abode, and there, in shameful secrecy, consumes the element for which he is powerless to pay—the inevitable Nemesis following.
Sixth Verse (All lights down in front. Ghastly green light at wings).
Up his sordid stairs in secret to the cistern now he steals,
Where, amidst organic matter, gambol microscopic eels;
Tremblingly he turns the tap on—not a trickle greets the trough!
For the stony-hearted turncock's gone and cut his water off!
Refrain (in which the profligate is supposed to demand an explanation from the turncock, with a terrible dénoûment).
"Rate a quarter owing,
Comp'ny stopped supply."
"Set the stream a-flowing,
Demon—or you die!"
"Mercy!—ah! you've choked me!"
[In hoarse, strangled voice as the turncock.
"Will you turn the plug?" [Savagely as the hero.
"No!" [Faintly, as turncock.
[Business of flinging a corpse on stage, and regarding it terror-stricken. A long pause; then, in a whisper,—
"The fool provoked me!
(With a maniac laugh.) Horror! I'm a Thug!"
[Here the artist will die, mad, in frightful agony, and rise to bow his acknowledgments.
ix.—THE DUETTISTS.
The "Duet and Dance" form so important a feature in Music-hall entertainments, that they could hardly, with any propriety, be neglected in a model compilation such as Mr. Punch's, and it is possible that he may offer more than one example of this blameless diversion. For some reason or other, the habit of singing in pairs would seem to induce a pessimistic tone of mind in most Music-hall artistes, and—why, Mr. Punch does not pretend to say—this cynicism is always more marked when the performers are of the softer sex. Our present study is intended to fulfil the requirements of the most confirmed female sceptic, and, though the Message of the Music Halls may have been given worthier and fuller expression by pens more practised in such compositions, Mr. Punch is still modestly confident that this ditty, with all its shortcomings, can be sung in any Music Hall in the Metropolis without exciting any sentiment other than entire approval of the teaching it conveys. One drawback, indeed, it has, but that concerns the performers alone. For the sake of affording contrast and relief, it was thought expedient that one of the fair duettists should profess an optimism which may—perhaps must—tend to impair her popularity. A conscientious artiste may legitimately object, for the sake of her professional reputation, to present herself in so humiliating a character as that of an ingénue, and a female "Juggins"; and it does seem as if the Cynical Sister must inevitably monopolise the sympathies of an enlightened audience. However, this difficulty is less formidable than it appears; it should be easy for the Unsophisticated Sister to convey a subtle suggestion here and there, possibly in the incidental dance between the verses, that she is not really inferior to her partner in smartness and knowledge of the world. But perhaps it would be the fairest arrangement if the Sisters could agree to alternate so ungrateful a rôle.