SCENE FROM “A VENETIAN VIGNETTE”
The Portuguese Captain Teixeira, who had wonderful imitative faculties, so that twice I have seen him hypnotize young birds to within a few inches of his hand, as a nightingale “off,” “trilled with all the passion of all the love songs that have been sung since the world began”—an interpolation made by the dramatist in his dialogue to permit of an effect so original! “Noises off” tolled the bell—the great kitchen poker—which was intended to warn the lovers of the fleet passage of the hour, just about five minutes behind time, making his thus tardy entry on the principle that nothing be lost.
Lieut. H., who had taken part in bull-fighting in Southern America, gave me the coup de grâce in his own fashion, between the shoulder blades, and, judging by the force, with a momentary forgetting of the fact that he was only in Southern Germany. With a “Mio Dio! Io sono morto!” for the sake of local colouring, I and the curtain fell almost simultaneously.
“The Secret: A Shudder in 3 Scenes,” was probably most memorable from the secret fact that it secured me a few inches of forbidden candle, which I used in surreptitious reading after “lights out” for some nights after. “The Brigand: a Musical Absurdity,” written by a versatile Roman Catholic padre, was apparently sufficiently realistic to procure me the first visit next morning from an officer in the audience who had lost his watch! Unrehearsed effects in this performance were the igniting of the cardboard brazier by the toppling over of the candle set within to illuminate it; the rolling across the stage of an empty and otherwise rather suspicious looking bottle, and the violent antipathies evidenced by “Bobby,” a French officer’s adopted fox-terrier, which I had to keep at bay with my double-barrelled cardboard blunderbuss.
A CARLSRUHE PLAY-BILL.
Emerging from the hall within a few minutes of roll-call and with our faces masked by the vigorous colourations of our brigandage “under the greenwood tree,” we discovered to our dismay that the water supply had been cut off. For days afterwards my knees had a brownness unknown to them since I discarded the Black Watch kilt.
POSTER FOR A FRENCH PLAY.