Màrya. Said I wanted to go to vespers! (They burst out laughing; and exeunt.)
“LA TRAVIATA.”
(AS DESCRIBED BY A SHOPKEEPER).
By GORBOUNÒV.
One day I was out for a spree with my man Jack, that serves in the shop, you know, and we passed a stone theatre. Jack went up and began reading the advertisement bill that they’d got stuck up, and says he, “I can’t understand this; ’tisn’t written plain in our talk.” Well, a gent came by and Jack says: “Please, mister, what’s written here?” So he read it. “Frou-Frou” says he. “And what does that mean?” “Oh,” says he, “that’s foreign for any real good thing.” “Really now! thank you kindly, sir.... Mister Policeman, you belong in these parts; perhaps you can tell us what sort of thing a frou-frou is?” “You’d better go to the ticket-office,” says he; “they’ll tell you all about it there.” So we went to the ticket-office and asked for two tickets, right up top, as high as you can go. “For which performance?” “Frou-Frou.” “This is the opera here,” says he. “Oh well, it’s all one to us; give us two tickets; we don’t mind what you show us. Now Jack! Hurry up!” So we went in and sat down and these I-talian actor-folk were singin’ away as hard as they could go. First of all, they were sitting at dinner, eating and drinking and singin’ about how they was havin’ a jolly time and was quite satisfied. Then Mrs. Patty poured out a glass of claret and gave it to Mr. Canzelari, an’ says she: “Have a drink, won’t you?” So he drank it off and said: “My dear, I’m in love with you!” “You don’t mean it?” “True.” “Then if so,” says she, “you can go off about your business and I’ll sit and think over my life, because that’s the right and proper thing for a woman to do when she thinks of takin’ a sweetheart.” So Mrs. Patty sat and thought over all her life, and then another man came in. “Look here, ma’am,” says he, “I haven’t the pleasure of knowing your name, but I’ve come to talk to you about my lad; he’s got himself into hot water, and now he’s hiding in your house. Just you kick him out.” “Let’s go into the garden, sir,” said she, “it’s nicer talking in the open air.” So out they went into the garden, and there she says to him, says she: “I tell you what I’ll do, sir; I’ll write and give him a piece of my mind, and I’ll give it him so plain that he won’t come hanging about me any more, because I don’t hold with wildness and bad ways myself.” So then we went out into a sort of passage place and had some apples to cool our throats, for it was that hot that I was just stifled. When we got back again I says to Jack: “Now, mind you look at it and see all they do.” “I’m a-lookin’,” says he. “What’s going to come of it all?” “Why,” says he, “the young man’s come back to her—silly fellah—to make his apologies and tell her it was none of his doin’, an’ his guv’nor made the whole think up.” So then she up an’ says to him: “You’ve not done the genteel thing by me; you’ve put me to the blush before all these people; but all the same,” says she, “I’m over head and ears in love with you! An’ there’s my photygraph for a keepsake, an’ I’m very sorry,” says she, “but it’s time for me to die.”... She just went on singing for another half-hour, and then she gave up the ghost.
A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LETTER FROM EMS.
By GORBOUNÒV.
