Mr. Troubadour Ambleleg was a tenor. He waved his light voice for a light salary in the chorus of an unexpensive opera company that made the summer months of 1881 and the opera air of the West End of St. Louis melodious to a sometimes quite harassing degree. His soul was as full of art as his throat was of music. He doted upon the beautiful wherever he came in contact with it, and frequently, when he heard of beauty lying around in languid looseness in any direction, he went out of his way to find it. It was in this manner he became acquainted with Miss Silica Justaytine. She was the belle of an upperly upper circle, a glowing, brown-eyed maiden, with sun-kissed hair, and the sweetest smiles that ever played in Polar-light style over the ruffs and ruchings of an expensive toilet. Indeed, an aurora borealis of glinting good nature shone upon the horizon of her lips, and a single glance of her eye was worth more to a man in love than the advent of a sprinkling cart to a traveller perishing of thirst on a dry and burning desert. When Mr. Ambleleg saw Miss Justaytine, that pink of beauty and perfection of belleship, gracing a front bench, where the susceptible tenor was nightly airing his voice at a salary of ten dollars a week, their eyes met and their loves at once intertwined. Like Tecetl, the daughter of Montezuma, who found in the yellow-haired warrior, Alvarado, the lover she had dreamt of long before the prow of the "fair god's" vessel touched the shores of Mexico, the super-æsthetical maiden of my story saw in the chorus singer the affinity for which she had long looked and sighed. Mr. Ambleleg, too, at once became aware that in Miss Justaytine he had met his fate. They smiled, and sighed, and ogled, and encouraged each other across the foot-lights. The chorus singer forgot all the other maiden beauty that flourished under the foliage, and there were crushed and trampled hearts lying in the chasm across which Ambleleg and Miss Justaytine exchanged their affections. But Ambleleg did not mind it. He had learned that Miss Justaytine was the queen of her circle, and he determined to share her crown with her. Now, Ambleleg was not wealthy; neither was he rich in prepossessing features. His teeth were freckled, his mouth was big, his forehead small, his eyes expressionless, his hair of a buttery yellow, his moustache vapid, his shirt calico, and usually required to do long service without washing, while his general appearance was not extravagantly pleasant, and certainly not over-abundant in that grace and ease for which pretty girls have, at all times, a fondness. Therefore, it was surprising that Miss Silica Justaytine fell in love with the chorus-singing tenor. But she did so, and, it seems, fell so deeply into admiration of himself and his voice, that she could not have done better had she made the start, in falling, from the top of a seven-story house. When love is once kindled in the glow of a pair of admiring eyes, look out for a conflagration in the neighborhood of the pericardium. Night after night, as the moon washed the tree tops with waves of silver, and the leaves rustled their whispers to each other, Miss Silica Justaytine sat in the front row, either joining with the chorus of æsthetic maidens in "Patience" in singing to her own ideal Bunthorne,—
Turn, oh turn in this direction,
Shed, oh shed a gentle smile;
With a glance of sad perfection
My poor fainting heart beguile!
On such eyes as maidens cherish
Let thy fond adorer gaze,
Or incontinently perish
In their all-consuming rays.
Or following Bettina through the mazes of the "Mascotte" gobble song, while she had a Pippo of her own in mind all the time. Ambleleg noticed this growing affection, and sang all the louder, and all the wilder, to the great endangerment of the performances. At last Miss Silica Justaytine left him a token of her love—a soft, white rose, which she kissed and placed in her chair as she departed one evening. Ambleleg cleared the stage at a bound, secured the creamy flower, pressed it to his lips and over his calico shirt bosom, after which he carefully stowed it away in a pocket-book with his wash and board-bills. The following day Miss Silica Justaytine was toying with a $10,000 necklace in the bay window of her palatial residence on Pinafore Avenue, when the postman handed her a letter in a yellow envelope. It was from Ambleleg. She blushed as she looked at it, then opened and read it, smiled and floated gracefully up to an escritoire, where she indited a charming little note on pink monogram paper with heavy gold edges, and placed it in one of the nattiest and most scrumptious envelopes you ever saw. Ambleleg read that note that very night to a group of wide-eyed and open-mouthed chorus singers. It invited him to call on Miss Justaytine the next day. The call was made. Miss Silica Justaytine received Ambleleg at the front door, and led him to the magnificent parlor as graciously as if he were a prince.
"My Pippo!" she cried, as she flung her arms around his neck, and almost knocked over the piano stool.
"My Bettina!" sighed the tenor, as he pressed her to his glowing bosom.
After the first agony of meeting they sat down and told the stories of their love. Cruel fate had dealt harshly with both. One was already engaged to be married; the other would not begin to have a ghost of a show at monogamy if wives were to be had at ten cents a dozen. Miss Justaytine was betrothed to Mr. Praymore, a young man who had hopes of coming into a fortune some day or other, providing he survived the parent who accumulated it. Mr. Ambleleg was impecunious; still she said she could scrape up enough to buy him a suit of clothes and a box of tooth-powder, and then they might fly together as far as East St. Louis anyhow. Miss Justaytine was to become a wandering minstrel's bride. She took the $5,000 diamond engagement ring Mr. Praymore had given her, from her finger, and put on a $2 imitation amethyst that the chorus singer gave her. What simple, pure, and unselfish love.
But the course of true love is as rough as the rocky roads in Dublin. Not content with wandering under his inamorata's window every night wasting his breath in whistling Sullivan's music to pieces, while Bettina opened the shutters of the third-story window and softly sang,—
For I mi-hy turkey's love,
to which Pippo melodiously responded,—
And I my shee-eep love.