Scene No. 1.—“The Rosy Realms of Boundless Bliss.”
Scene No. 2.—En route from Rosy Realms to Rag-and-Bottle Alley, St. Giles’s.
One night (says Mr. Scott) several of his confrères had been invited to a supper, and the number included the musical director of the theatre they were then playing at. His absence from the orchestra nearly the entire evening in question was generally commented on, and it subsequently leaked out that he had been busily employed composing the music of a song which he intended to submit to them for approval before the party broke up. The night being a fine one, it was agreed to walk from the theatre to the house of their host. The composer, when he sallied from the stage door, was seen to have a huge roll of music, carefully tied up, peeping from one of his overcoat pockets. This was just as carefully abstracted, and some one was deputed to stroll leisurely onward and engage the victim in apparently earnest conversation, while the rest remained behind and committed the music to memory, after which the manuscript was skilfully returned without arousing the slightest suspicion.
At the termination of the meal, and before the musician could reach the piano, Leslie began to whistle a few bars of the melody, which, it is scarcely necessary to add, attracted universal attention. When pressed to continue, Leslie gave the air from beginning to end, and when, at the conclusion, he remarked that it was an old English ballad, cold beads of perspiration gathered on the forehead of the unhappy composer. His solemn asseveration that he had that evening written an original melody to the same air, note for note, was received on every hand with apparent unbelief; and in order to verify Leslie’s statement, most of those present followed his lead and sang or whistled the composition through. The musician, we are told, was allowed to play it over, and the resemblance, of course, was so striking that he himself began to doubt his own sanity. But when he came to know of the trick by which he had been bamboozled, he enjoyed the joke as much as those who carried it out.
NOT THE CORRECT WAY OF PUDDING IT.
Master Gussy. Oh, boohoo! What a shame to go throwing plum-pudding about like that!
THE HUMANIZING INFLUENCE OF PANTOMIME.