BY FRANK CASTLES.
A Lady Standing with one Hand on a Chair in a Somewhat Amateurish Attitude.
Our kind hostess has asked me to recite something, "by special request," but I really don't know what to do. I have only a very small repertoire, and I'm afraid you know all my stock recitations. What shall I do? (Pause.) I have it; I'll give you something entirely original. I'll tell you about my last experience of reciting, which really is the cause of my being so nervous to-night. I began reciting about a year ago; I took elocution lessons with Mr. ——; no, I won't tell you his name, I want to keep him all to myself. I studied the usual things with him—the "Mercy" speech from the "Merchant of Venice," and Juliet's "Balcony scene," but I somehow never could imagine my fat, red-faced, snub-nosed old master (there! I've told you who he was), I never could fancy him as an ideal Romeo; he looked much more like Polonius, or the Ghost before he was a ghost—I mean as he probably was in the flesh.
My elocution master told me that Shakespeare was not my forte, so I studied some more modern pieces. He told me I was getting on very well—"one of my most promising pupils," but I found that he said that to every one.
Well, it soon became known that I recited (one must have some little vices, you know, just to show up one's virtues). I received an invitation from Lady Midas for a musical evening last Friday, and in a postscript, "We hope you will favor us with a recitation." Very flattering, wasn't it?
I went there fully primed with three pieces—"The Lifeboat," by Sims, "The Lost Soul," and Calverley's "Waiting." I thought that I had hit on a perfectly original selection; but I was soon undeceived. There were a great many people at Lady Midas', quite fifty, I should think, or perhaps two hundred; but I'm very bad at guessing numbers. We had a lot of music. A young man, with red hair and little twinkling light eyes, sang a song by De Lara, but it did not sound as well as when I heard the composer sing it. Then two girls played a banjo duet; then—no, we had another song first, then a girl with big eyes and an ugly dress—brown nun's veiling with yellow lace, and beads, and ribbons, and sham flowers and all sorts of horrid things, so ugly, I'm sure it was made at home. Well—where was I? Oh, yes!—she stood up and recited, what do you think? Why, "Calverley's Waiting!" Oh! I was so cross when it came to the last verses; you remember how they go (imitating)—
"'Hush! hark! I see a hovering form!
From the dim distance slowly rolled;
It rocks like lilies in a storm,
And oh! its hues are green and gold.
'It comes, it comes! Ah! rest is sweet,
And there is rest, my babe, for us!'
She ceased, as at her very feet
Stopped the St. John's Wood omnibus."
Well, when I heard that I felt inclined to cry. Just imagine how provoking; one of the pieces I had been practicing for weeks past. Oh, it was annoying! After that there was a violin solo, then another—no, then I had an ice, such a nice young man, just up from Aldershot, very young, but so amusing, and so full of somebody of "ours" who had won something, or lost something, I could not quite make out which.
Then we came back to the drawing-room, and an elderly spinster, with curls, sang, "Oh that we two were Maying," and the young man from Aldershot said, "Thank goodness we aren't."