The man who keeps the door at the Park Theatre didn't seem to know me at fust, but the minit I writ out my name the hull length, and handed it over, curlecues and all, and told him I wanted the Astor House box, he was as perlite as a basket of chips. He handed me over to another chap, who took me up stairs and along a dark entry way, till he ended in a harnsome leetle pen, all curtained off with red silk, with purty mahogany frames that slid up and down over a sort of red pulpit cushion that run round the front side.
The feller he shut me up, and I sot down on one of the chairs in the box, and took a gineral survey of the theatre. From where I sot, it looked as if somebody had laid down an allfired big horse-shoe for a pattern, and then built after it one tier of seats above another till they got tired of the fun, and topped off with a young sky all covered over with golden picters and curlecued work.
There was a consarned great curtain hung down afore the stage, with a sort of an Injun mound in the middle, and a house built on top of it. A lot of painted fellers hung about the front of the curtain, niggers and Injuns, some a setting down and some a standing up, and looking like human meat-axes gone to sleep. One feller that was squat down with his back leaned agin a post, had something that looked like a bunch of prime onions with the tops on, stuffed inter his bosom, and he held a kind of a short handled frying-pan in his hand as if he meant to cook some and have a smart fry, as soon as he could git tu a fire.
I hadn't sot long when the men begun to stream into the theatre like all possessed, with a small sprinkling of the feminine gender, jest enough to take the cuss off and no more.
In less than no time the house was jammed chuck full and running over, till I raly felt as if it was wicked to keep so much room all to myself, when the rest was stowed and jammed up so close that you couldn't a hung up a flax seed edgeways between 'em, but think sez I, every one for himself—I know when I'm well off, and that's enough. So I leaned over the cushion, and let one hand hang a leetle over the edge, as independent as if the whole theatre was mine.
By-am-by the curtain begun to roll up, and I'd like to have larfed right out to see them painted chaps du themselves up and curl over the roller—fust their feet doubled up, then their legs and hips and shoulders—then the roller took a slice off from the bottom of the mound, and turights, the hull was twisted up into a beam, and hitched to the ruff—goodness gracious knows how, I don't!
Wal, when the curtain was all rolled up snug, there raly was a picter worth looking on behind it. There was a great high mountain with rail fences cutting across it, and bridges and trees, that made a feller feel oneasy to git into the shade, and oxen and cows and folks a driving 'em, going along the road, that run around slantindicular to the top, and there, jest at the foot of the hill, was a purty leetle house half kivered over with grape vines and morning glories that made me think of hum till I could a bust out crying as well as not.
All to once there was a toot horn sounded up among the rocks, and then—oh creation! what a grist of harnsome gals cum a dancing and larfing and hopping down the mountain, all with curls a flying and posies twisted among 'em, and white frocks on, and ribbons a streaming out every which way, and sich feet, I swanny it made me ketch my breath to see 'em a cutting about under their white petticoats.
When they got down onto the flat before the house, the way they cut it down heel and toe, right and left, down outside and up the middle, was enough to make the York tippes, the darned lazy coots, ashamed of themselves. It was Down East all over!—they put it down about right, with the ginuine Yankee grit. I felt all in a twitter to git down and shake a toe with them. It would be worth while to cut a double shuffle among so many harnsome gals, with a hull pen chuck full of fiddles a reeling off the music for you. I'll be darned, Par, if I don't believe it would make the blood streak it through your old veins about the quickest, if you be a Justice of the Peace and a Deacon of the Church.