The next Koshare festivity in regular order was the shooting-match.
Leon, who had inherited from some Nimrod of his race, long since turned to dust, that true eye and steady hand which make gunning a success, was here master of ceremonies as well as contributor of prizes.
The first of these, a pair of gold sleeve-links, he, himself, easily won, and subsequently donated to Dennis the dudish table-waiter. Of the five prizes, two others were won by the two impecunious lungers, one by the Harvard man, and another by the Antiquary. The shooting-match, enjoyed as it was by the near population of Mesilla Valley, proved a big success, and weekly grew in grace with the aborigines as having a fine flavor of circus shows and Mexican bull-fights, and was considered by the Koshare as one of their happiest hits.
Equally successful was the Thursday entertainment, held in the big dining-room, under the auspices of the landlord and his wife, with the cook, waiter, maids, and chore-boys gathered about the open door.
It consisted of vocal and instrumental music, and recitations in prose and rhyme; and, at a late hour, wound up with a bountiful supper contributed to the occasion by the generous landlord.
Miss Hemmenshaw, the star performer, gave, with admirable Rachelesque gesture and true dramatic fire, "The Widow of the Grand Army," recited with exquisite delicacy Shelley's "Cloud," and sent shivers down the backs of the entire assemblage, by a realistic presentation of Rossetti's "Sister Helen." The grey-eyed school-marm recited with genuine "School of Oratory" precision and finish "Barbara Frietchie," Holmes' "Chambered Nautilus," Longfellow's "Sandalphon," and "Tom O'Connor's Cat." Leon read, with admirable humor, some of Mr. Dooley's best; and the Harvard man brought down the house with Kipling's "Truce of the Bear."
There was some fine piano and banjo playing, and the singing of duets; and the Journalist rendered, in his exquisite tenor, Ben Jonson's rare old love-song, "Drink to me only with thine eyes."
"Strange," commented the Antiquary (who in his miscellaneous mental storage had found room for some fine old Elizabethan plays), turning to Miss Hemmenshaw in the pause of the song, "Ben Jonson is dust these three hundred years, and still his verses come singing down the ages, keeping intact their own immortal flavor. The song-maker's is, indeed, an art that 'smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust.' Well might they write him, 'O rare Ben Jonson.'"
"And how exquisitely," responded the lady, "is the air married to the words!" And now the Minister brought forward his Cremona. He was a finished violinist, with a touch that well-nigh amounted to genius. All praised his performance. At its close the Grumbler, in an aside to the Antiquary, thus delivered himself:—
"To some, God giveth common-sense; to others, to play the fiddle!"