Positively the Last Performance!
(You must come on with a general suggestion in your manner that you are supposed to be the proprietor of an itinerant Cat and Canary Troupe. Begin with a slow and somewhat depressed shake of the head, as if in answer to imaginary inquirer.)
No, we ain’t performin’ to-day, Sir, and the boys are all on the gape
At seem’ the mice in mournin’, and the cats in chokers o’ crape;
But I’m giving the Show a rest, d’ye see? for I didn’t feel up to the job,
(Pause—then subdued) For my leadin’ comejian’s left me, Sir—
(Explanatory, perceiving you are not understood)—the brindle kinairy—(more impatiently) Bob!
What, ye don’t remember? (Surprise.) Not him as wore the toonic o’ Turkey red?
What rode in a gilded kerridge with a ’at an’ plumes on his ’ed?
And, as soon as we’d taken a tanner, ’ud fire a saloot from the gun? [Excitedly.
There was Talent inside o’ that bird, there was, or I never see it in one!
(Philosophic bitterness.) Well, he’s soon forgot—but I’ve often thought as a
fish keeps longer than Fame!
(Sudden comprehension and restored cordiality.) Oh, ye didn’t know him as Bob?... I see—no, that were his private name.
I used to announce him in public on a more long-winded-er scale—
I christened him “Gineral Moultky,” (apologetically) which he ’ad rather gone at the tail;
And a bird more popilar never performed on a peripathetic stage,
He was allers sure of a round of applause as soon as he quitted the cage!
For he thoroughly hentered into the part he was down for to play,
And he never got “fluffy” nor “queered the pitch,”—leastwise, till the hother day.
I thought he’d bin hoverexertin’ hisself, and ’ud better be out of the bill,
But it wasn’t till yesterday hevenin I’d any ideer he was ill!
Then I see he was rough on the top of his ’ed, and his tongue looked dry at the tip,
And it dawned on me like a thunderbolt—“Great Evings!” I groaned,—“the Pip!” (Pause here, to emphasise the tremendous gravity of this discovery.)
Well, I ’ad bin trainin’ a siskin to hunderstudy the part, (more ordinary tone for this)
And I sent him on—(tolerantly)—which he done his best, but he ’adn’t no notion o’ Hart!
So I left the pitch as soon as I could, and (meanin’ to make more ’aste)
I cut across one o’ them buildin’ sites as was left a runnin’ to waste.
There was yawning pits by the flinty road, as rendered the prospeck dull,
And ’ere and there a winderless ’ouse, with the look of a grinning skull,
(Try to paint this scene visibly for the audience; background is essential for what is to come.)
A storm had bin ’anging about all day (and it broke, you’ll remember, at last!)
So I ’urried on, it was gettin’ late—and the Gineral sinking fast!
(You are now approaching the harrowing part, but keep yourself in reserve for the present.)
But all on a sudding I ’eard him give a kind of a feeble flap,
And I stops, and sez in a ’opeful way, “Why, you’re up in yer sterrups, old chap.”
(A bold metapher applied to a bird, but characteristic in the speaker.)
(Sink your voice.) Then I see by the look of his sorrowful eye he was thinkin’: “Afore I go,
I’d like to see one performance—for the last—of the dear old Show!”
(Note, and make your audience feel, the touch of Nature here.)
And I sez, with a ketch in my voice, “You shall!” and I whipped the sheet off the board,
I stuck up the pair o’ trestles, and fastened the tightrope cord;
Then I propped the Gineral up in a place from which he could see the ’ole,
And I set the tabbies a-sparring, and the mice a-climbing the pole.
(Build up the whole scene gradually; the dreary neighbourhood, the total absence of bystanders, the lurid threatening sky, and the humble entertainment proceeding in the foreground.)
I put my company through their tricks—and they made my hold eyes dim,
For they never performed for no orjence like they did last night for him!
Them tabbies sparred with a science you’d ’ardly expect from sich,
And the mouse (what usually boggles) fetched flags with never no ’itch!
Aye, we worked the Show in that lonely place to the sound o’ the mutterin’ storm,
Right through till we come to the finish—the part he used to perform.
He was out of the cage in a minnit—egged on by puffessional pride,
He pecked that incompitent siskin till he made him stand o’ one side!
Well, I felt like ’aving a good cry then—but the time
’adn’t come for that,
So I slipped his uniform over his ’ed, and tied on his little cock-hat. [With great tenderness.
And he set in his tiny kerridge, and was drored along by the mice,
A-looking that ’appy and pleased with hisself, I got ’em to do it twice! [Tone of affectionate retrospection.
The very tabbies they gazed on him then with their heyes dilatin’ in haw,
As he ’obbled along to the cannon, with the match in his wasted claw!
I never ’eard that cannon afore give sech a tremenjious pop—
(Solemnly.) And a peal o’ thunder responded, as seemed all over the shop!
For a second Bob stood in the lightning, so noble, and bold, and big;—
Then ... a stagger ... a flutter ... a broken chirp— (you can add immensely to the effect here by a little appropriate action. Pause, and give time for a solemn hush to fall upon the audience, then, with a forced calm, as if you were doing violence to your own feelings)—he was orf, Sir,—(a slight gulp)—he’d ’opped the twig!
(Second Pause: then more briskly, but still with strong emotion to the close)
So now you’ve the hexplanation of the crape round the tabbies’ necks,
And kin understand why we close to-day “in token of our respecks.”
The time has now come for Mr. Punch to bid his pupils farewell, which he does with a pleasure that he has some reason to hope will be not unreciprocated. During the few months over which this course has extended, he has made it his aim to furnish the young carpet-knight for the fray as completely as possible, and, if the Amateur Reciter be not (as some hold) already invulnerable, the panoply of pieces with which he has been armed here should go far to render him so.
All Mr. Punch would ask in return is that, when any one of his young friends is retiring, flushed with triumph, amidst an intoxicating murmur of faint applause and renewed conversation, after delivering some composition of his Preceptor’s, he will not suffer himself to be completely dazzled by success, but will remember the means which have contributed thereto with such gratitude as he may be able to command.
“Discoveries at Pompeii.”—Under this heading we read in the Times that four silver urns of fair size were found, also four smaller vessels, eight open vases, four cups ornamented with leaves, &c. “Urns” for hot water: “smaller vessels,” tea-pots; “eight open vases,” sugar-basins; “four cups,” tea-cups, “ornamented with leaves,”—very fanciful design, probably tea-leaves,—and there we have before us “Five o’clock Tea, as known to the Ladies of Pompeii.”