Senator John A. Logan's play, "The Spy," is in great demand, a number of theatrical speculators having entered the lists for it, the managers for the Madison Square and Union Square theatres being specially eager to get hold of it. A gentleman who is in the author's confidence assures us he has read the play, and can testify to its high dramatic merits. "It will have to be rewritten," said he, "for Logan has thrown it together with characteristic looseness; but it is full of lively dialogue and exciting situations. In the hands of a thorough playwright it would become a splendid melodrama." The play treats upon certain incidents of the late Civil War, and the romantic experiences of a certain Major Algernon Bellville, U.S.A., who is beloved by Maud Glynne, daughter of a Confederate general. The plot turns upon the young lady's unsuccessful effort to convey intelligence of a proposed sortie to her lover in the Union ranks. She is slain while masking in male attire by Reginald De Courcey, a rejected lover, who is serving as her father's aide-de-camp. This melancholy tragedy is enacted at a spot appointed by the lovers as a rendezvous. Major Bellville rushes in to find his fair idol a corpse. He is wild with grief. The melodrama concludes thus:
De Bell—Aha! Who done this deed?
Lieutenant Smythe—Yonder Reginald De Courcey done it, for I seen him when he done it.
Reginald—'Sdeath! 'Tis a lie upon my honor. I didn't do no such thing.
De Bell—Thou must die. (Draws his sword.) Prepare to meet thy Maker. (Stabs him.)
Reginald (falling)—I see angels. (Dies.)
De Bell—Now, leave me, good Smythe; I fain would rest. (Exit Smythe.) O Maud, Maud, my spotless pearl, what craven hand has snatched thee from our midst? But I will follow thee. Aha, what have we here? A phial of poison secreted in the stump of this gnarled oak! I thank thee, auspicious heaven, for this sweet boon! (Drinks poison.) Farewell, my native land, I die for thee. (Falls and writhes.) Oh, horror! what if the poison be drugged—no, no—it must not be—I must die—O Maud—O flag—O my sweet country! I reel, I cannot see—my heart is bursting—Oh! (Dies.) (Enter troops.)
General Glynne—Aha! My daughter! And Bellville, too! Both dead! How sad—how mortifying. Convey them to yonder cemetery, and bury them side by side under the weeping-willow. They were separated in life—in death let them be united. (Slow curtain.)
During the preliminary campaign of 1884 Field had no end of fun with what he called the "Logan Lyrics," after this manner:
LOGAN'S LAMENT