Who clamoreth with a loud voice and saith, verily, am not I a bad man? Who is he that walketh unsteadily and singeth unto himself, "The bright angels are waiting for me?" Who wotteth not even a fractional wot, but setteth his chronometer with the wooden watch of the watchmaker, and by means of a tooth-brush?
Go to. Is it not he who bangeth his intellect ferninst the bock beer, even unto the eleventh hour?
BILLIOUS NYE AND THE AMATEUR STAGE.
A great portion of my time at present is taken up in preparations for my appearance in a few weeks on the amateur stage.
Excursion trains will run from Denver on this occasion, and no pains will be spared to make the grand spectacular hoo-doo one long to be remembered.
Whenever any society or association desires to make a few thousand dollars for the relief of knock-kneed Piutes, or to purchase liver-pads for impecunious Senegambians, it only has to advertise that I am to appear on the amateur stage in a heavy part.
I am not a brilliant success in the "Say-wilt-be-mine" part. Just as I get the heroine up close to me near the footlights, and begin to hug her a little as I would at home, and I temporarily forget that a thousand eyes are upon me, it comes over me that my wife is in the audience and does not seem to enjoy the play. This throws a large four-dollar gloom over the entire surroundings, and I seem to lose my grip, so to speak.
Many years ago when I was young and, as one might say, in the hey-day of vigorous manhood, and had an appetite like a P. K. Dederick Perpetual Hay Press, I consented to take a leading part, and although I could generally worry through a little light comedy, I had not then learned how rough and uncouth I appeared as the heavy lover. I therefore consented to hug a beautiful young thing before five hundred people, and in the full glare of the footlights, whom I would not have dared to wink at in her father's parlor at midnight, with the lamp turned clear down.