Five trombones, ten violas, twelve violins, a drum and bass-viol bombardment rose to a high-C climax, with the chorus scrambling loyally after them like a mountaineer scaling a cliff for an eaglet's nest.
It is the Bay—it is the Bay—it is the Ba-a-ay
Of Love and Bunge-e-e-l—
shouted the seventy-five of them, receding with a grape-vine motion into the wings.
Enter Cyrus Hinkelstein, mayor and pickle-magnate of Brineytown, on the Suwanee, in a too large white waistcoat, white-duck comedy spats, and a pink-canvas bald head.
He institutes an immediate search behind tropical vines and along the under sides of palm fronds for the forty-dollar juvenile who is pursuing the Red Widow from the summer hotel, Act One to Act Two, tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.
Enter the Red Widow in a black, fish-scale gown that calls out the stealthy pencil of every Middle West dressmaker in the house and rapid calculation from the women with a good memory and some fish-scales on a discarded basque.
The Red Widow, with a poinsettia sprawling like a frantic clutch at her heart, and her burnished gold head rising with the grace of a gold flower out of a vase!
Cyrus assumes a swoon of delight, throws out a cue—"The date-trees are blooming"—the conductor raps his baton twice for their feature duet entitled, "Oh, Let Me Die on Broadway," and the spot-light focuses.
The house clamors for a fourth encore, but the lights flash on. The pursuing son, in the face of prolonged applause, white trousers, and a straw katy, bursts upon the scene with his features in first position for the dénouement.
But the audience clamors on. The son postpones his expression and leans against a jungle to a fourth encore of the tuneful Thanatopsis.