[Footnote 2: The reader will notice that this drama was more popular than the Arabian Nights, which only ran for one thousand and one nights.]
[Footnote 3: The music of these songs can be purchased at Timbuctoo.]
ACT II.
Scene.--Steamboat landing. Real steamboat, real landing, real water, real smoke coming out of a real chimney on the steamboat. Real captain and real passengers. (It is understood that there is to be no make-believe about the fares.) A real chambermaid in the back cabin would add to the effectiveness of the scene, but is not an absolute necessity.
[The author would here say that he has a proper respect for the auxiliaries of the stage, and, in a scene, which belongs to the stage carpenter, the author would be cruel If he marred the effects of the scenery by mere words. He therefore uses as little of those superfluities as possible. In a nautical scene of course some words will slip in, which it would be improper to print, but as that is chicken (the polite for foul) language, the author, of course, is not responsible for it.]
As the curtain rises, real women with real oranges parade the dock, singing:
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Come buy our sweet oranges, come buy! Hark, as we holler, Six for a dollar, Come buy our sweet oranges, come buy! |
Real scream from steam whistle. JENKINS obeys the orange-women, and goes By on a run. Steamboat leaves wharf-twenty-two feet out in stream, when JENKINS reaches string-piece. Grand and terrific jump by JENKINS, twenty-two feet in the clear. He lands on the steamer, and all the sailors shout.
Curtain
[As in a realistic scene one must stick to reality, you will notice that I made JENKINS leap twenty-two feet, which is, I am informed, the exact space jumped over by the father of his country on a festive occasion.]