"Tellum me, I conjure ye, are there any such things as quarters in the round world? It is now six months since I last mingled with the world, and I really forget how many make a dollar."
Touched to the quick by his plaintiff tone, I drew forth a quarter, and held it before his anguished vision. Never shall I forget how his eyes was sot on that ravishing coin.
"Can it indeed be real?" says he, "or is it but a quarter of the mind?"
I was afeard he might come the "let me clutch thee" dodge if I inflamed his imagination any longer; so I put it back into my pocket, and axidently revealed the handle of my revolver.
When my fren had cut the damp grass away from one of the orchestra seats with his jack-knife, we sat down and put up an umbrella to keep off the dew. Being a little nervous, I asked the manager if there was any snakes about; and he said he see a couple in the parroquet last night, but didn't think they had got down to the orkestra yet. The vetrun, which was the audience, stoppd chasing a bull-frog in the vestibule when the manager struck up "Days of Abstinence" on his comb, and immediately took his seat on chair No. 1, with which he always commenced. The curting was then unpinned, and disclosed a scene in a lumber-yard, with a heavy mortgage on it. The Count de Mahoginy is discovered in the ak of leaving his young wife, who is seated on a pile of shavings, for the purpose of obtaining immediate relief from the
Union Defence Committee. The vetrun received him with great applause, and moved from seat to seat as though he was in a hurry to reach the gallery. When the artik spoke, there was so much empty stomik in his tones, that my fren said he seemed like a bean from another world. My fren is a spiritualist. The artik then went off at the left entrance, and immediately returned in the character of his own uncle, which had come home from California with two millions of dollars, and wished to give it to his affectionate nephew and niece. He found his niece in the lumber-yard, and having heard her sad story, divulged his intention to her and she immediately danced a Spanish par (which is French), and sung four songs in honor of the sixty-ninth regiment. Then the uncle danced a hornpipe, which he learned on the hocean; and so they kept agoin till about nine o'clock, when the countess said she heard her husband coming. The uncle was so taken aback by this, that he immediately made himself into a tableau representing the last charge of the Fire Zouaves at Bull Run: and as the comb struck up "I'm a loan, all a loan," the curtain was pinned up again. Just as the performance ended, the manager explained that he could only aford to keep two artiks—a male and female, and they only stayed because he had a mortgage on their wardrobes for over-drawed celery. "I'll light you to the door," says he, taking up one of the foot-lights, which was a turnip with a candle in it; "and I hope you'll come again when we projooce our new play. It's called 'The gas man's last charge,' and introjoces a real gas-meter and the sheriff."
My fren and I made no reply, but walked sadly from the ruins with tears in our eyes.
The regular Drama, my boy, cannot hope to succeed, while the war which now monopolizes all attention is believed by some critics to be a regular farce.
Yours, tragically,
Orpheus C. Kerr.