At home, sweet home again, she dwells
With loving friends once more.
[Curtain falls.
A DECEMBER CHARADE.—(FAREWELL.)
First Syllable: Fare.
CHARACTERS.
Joe and Ned, two young clerks from the city. Joe is in rough sea-clothes,—tarpaulin hat, stout boots, trousers tucked in; carries cod-lines, oil-clothes, and a rope-handled bucket. Ned is in gentleman’s fishing-costume; wears broad-brimmed straw hat, carries reed pole, lunch-basket, &c. They enter from opposite doors.
Joe. How fares ye, Ned? Been a-fishing? So’ve I. Let’s sit down on the bank here and talk it over. (Throws himself down. Ned spreads out his handkerchief, then seats himself upon it.)
Ned (affectedly, and with a sigh). Ah, well! or, rather, ah, ill! Another day of vacation gone. Already the store—the busy, crowded, everlasting store—looms up before me. Customers seem beckoning me away. I hear, methinks, the rustle of cambrics mingling with the rustling of the leaves, and—and—