The simple-hearted rustic firmly believes that by these timely ceremonies and invocations he has helped to keep the blight from his rye, and to insure a goodly return from the well-laden orchard trees. But “Twelfth Night” festivities are by no means confined to the simple, free-hearted sports of field and farm. In palace and mansion the feast is observed with great splendor, with masque and pageant, with rollicking song and mirth. Thousands of pounds are spent in preparing for the revels of a night. The long table spread for the feast is a wonder of art fresh from the hands of the pastry cook and confectioner. There are pasteboard castles to be blown up in jest, the rarest of old claret flowing like blood from the side of a wounded stag, with all sorts of curious and dainty conceits set forth amid sparkling glass and silver, while the guests playfully pelt one another with eggshells filled with rose-water. The cake, huge and shining in its frosty whiteness, and wrought in elaborate design, seems to tower over the rest of the feast with a sort of proud and smiling benignity, for reposing in its capacious depth lies the fateful prize of the evening, the bean which proclaims the lucky finder king over the evening’s festivities. The guests cut for this amid good-natured laughter and merriment, and when someone more fortunate than the rest has discovered it, they declare him with one accord “king of the bean,” and cheer him right lustily. The newly crowned monarch is raised aloft to the ceiling to mark a white cross upon one of the great oaken beams, for thereby will evil spirits be warded off for the evening and through all the year to come. The others then draw lots and assume their parts of lords or ministers of state, and each sustains his character with mock dignity throughout the revels. This quaint old ceremony is observed in palace and mansion and humbler household as well, and a sort of good-natured fellowship reigns supreme. The story is told of how Mary, Queen of Scots, when her maid was chosen queen, lent her own royal robes, that the part might be sustained with proper dignity.
“Mirth and revel, jest and play,
Quickly wears the night away.”
The candles have sputtered and burnt out, the tawdry tinsel is thrown aside for the soberer garb of the real, and Sir Francis Flatterer and Sir Randle Rackabite have passed into the ranks of everyday life. The laughter and mirth are but a memory, and we come back with a start to the daylight and the present, with its unfinished duties ever pressing for completion.
And Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” lies open before us. From its pages arise, through the master’s art, the living forms of Sir Toby and Malvolio, Viola and the Duke. “Grave and gay, the lovers, the laughers, and the laughed-at, are made to harmonize in one scene and one common purpose.” We can well imagine that Twelfth Night in the Middle Temple in the days of the long ago, when the happy company of barristers and students gathered to hear for the first time, the drama fresh from the master’s hand, when its exquisite poetry charmed with new grace and melody the ear of some secluded scholar, and the antics of its revellers brought a smile even to the lips of that grave and formal dispenser of justice. One commentator tells us that the title was probably suggested by this, the first night of its performance, but do we not find a subtler significance in its embodiment of the spirit of the season? Is not the mirth and jest of those old-time sports and festivities aptly repeated here in this crowd of revelling, laughter-creating personages, in the drollery of Sir Toby Belch and his comrades, and the fantastical vanity of Malvolio? And as, in the midst of those old-time Twelfth Night revels, with their care-free abandon and joy, we catch now and then the sub-tone of the minor, and the richer harmonies of life, a mere glimpse of the simple love and faith of those lives of the long ago, so it is that we look past the boisterous merriment of these jesting revellers of the play to discern the true beauty of the characters who stand in the half-light behind. Then we become conscious of a quiet harmony of color and form, and we feel anew the poet’s close touch with life and nature.
UNCLE ABRAHAM’S SERMON
THE SEANCE
By John Marshall Kelly
Author of “The Resurrection,” “The Tempered Wind,” “The Christmas Tree,” etc.
I’se be’n heahin’ some quare talk erbout yoah doin’s dis pas’ week an’ some yuther times, my heahers. I’se be’n telled erbout some uv dem sayoncies you niggahs hev be’n holdin’, same’s lak dey do up tuh Kunnel Simpson’s house, an’ dat dar triflin’ yalleh house gal uv his’n an’ dat mottled yahd boy be’n lahnin’ you, my belubbed flock, de wiles uv de debbil an’ claimin’ dey’s meejums an’ claihvoyans, an’ hev be’n holpin’ you-alls talk wif spookses an’ hobgoblins an’ onfamiliar sperits.