The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ during the interval that lay between this and Saturday evening in rehearsing my part for the entertainment thus advertised. I was not entirely free from doubts of the success of a 'take-in' so palpable and ridiculous, and even if a house-full of numbsculls should gather, I deemed the experiment a dangerous one for me; but my editorial friend took the risk, remarking that he had calculated his chances, and knew what he was about. Nevertheless, it was not without some trepidation that I entered Grecian Hall by the private door, at a little before seven o'clock, and laid my hat behind the temporary curtain that had been erected for the accommodation of the great Humbug Troupe. Applying my eye to a chink in the cloth, I perceived that the hall was crowded to suffocation. My editorial friend sat in a prominent position near the stage, and the audience was manifesting those signs of impatience which seem to be equally orthodox among the news-boys in the pit of the old Bowery Theatre and the coarse young rustics who go to 'shows' in the back villages of ruraldom. I tinkled a bell. The uproar grew quiet. I drew aside my curtain, and made my bow, amid the silent wonderment of my auditors. Then I said:—

      'Ladies and gentlemen: You now see before you the redoubtable Fantadimo Fantodimus, master of ceremonies for the Great Humbug Troupe. You also see before you, ladies and gentlemen, Mons. Belitz, the renowned magician, Mademoiselle Heliotrope, the graceful danseuse, Signor Strawstekowski, Herr Balamsass; and, in short, ladies and gentlemen, you see before you the sum and substance of the Great Humbug Troupe, as it exists in all its original splendor. We salute you!

      'My friends, you were drawn here to-night by the extravagantly worded and outlandish representations of a poster which promised you only one single thing, namely, that you should behold a Great Traveling Humbug. Nothing could be more honest, though some things might be more straightforward. Force of circumstances compels me this evening to represent the Great Traveling Humbug you came to see. I am this evening the greatest of humbugs. I travel. A week ago, I traveled into this village with the laudable intention of giving you a sensible lecture on EURIPIDES, a historical personage of whom some of you may have heard. I traveled over to this hall on the evening of my lecture, and spoke to a beggarly array of empty seats. To-morrow morning, I intend to travel to church in your beautiful village, repent of my sins, and on Monday travel home to New York, where I shall at once take measures to rid myself of the title I wear this evening, by earning my bread in the old-fashioned way, by the sweat of my brow.

      'Humbug, ladies and gentlemen, is a pill not at all disagreeable to take, when gilded carefully. My pill has been prepared by the hand of a novice, and you have swallowed it with your eyes open. May it benefit you!'

      Symptoms of a disturbance immediately became manifest, when my editorial angel arose and spread his wings over the troubled audience.

      'People of Tyre,' said he, 'the exhibition of the Great Humbug Troupe is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting and least objectionable that ever appeared in our village. It remains for us to make it instructive. I propose that we give three cheers for our brave entertainer,—hip, hip,

      'Hurrah! HURRAH! HURRAH!'

      Like young thunder the last cheer arose; and my bacon was saved!

      The receipts placed me in possession of fifty dollars, after defraying all expenses in Tyre and settling my bill and recovering my satchel from Sidon—which I did by a messenger the same evening after the lecture. My editorial friend advised me now to stop at Sidon only long enough to take the first train home, leaving the Sidonites to discover the sell without expense. But I scouted the idea. I was flushed with the success of the previous evening (a success mainly due, as the sagacious reader knows, to the editor of the Times and his corps of confidants distributed at intervals over the hall); I was chagrined at the turn my original enterprise had taken, but determined to carry it out 'to the death;' and, more than all, I was burning to revenge myself on the perfidious postmaster of Sidon, and Dr. Tomson and Squire Johnson and Mr. Dickson and Mr. Dobson and Mr. Potkins. And on Monday evening I faced an audience in Jones's Hall, Sidon, prominent among whom I noticed, the principal objects of my ire.

      IV.—HE DON'T MAKE A HIT IN SIDON, THOUGH SOME PERSON IN THE AUDIENCE DOES

      No time for contemplation was left on my hands, however; for as soon as I had articulated the words 'ladies and gentlemen,' an offensive missile hit me between my eyes, exploded, and deluged me with an odor in comparison with which that of Limberger cheese would be mere geranium. I was betrayed. Tyre had sent over a detachment of spies, and the Sidonites were armed. I briskly dodged several companion eggs whose foulness was permitted to adorn the walls of Jones's Hall behind me, and then undertook to escape. Simultaneously with the explosion of the first shot, a howl had burst from the audience, which boded no good for any prospects of comfort and profit I might entertain. Escaping on my part became no joke; and I beg the reader to believe that my chagrin was quite overwhelmed in the all-impressive desire to protect myself from total annihilation. In my subsequent gratitude at having accomplished this feat, I overlooked the little discomforts of an eye in mourning, a broken finger, and garments perfumed throughout in defiance of la mode.

      At present, I am engaged in a business which I deem far more respectable and lucrative than lecturing, to wit, explaining the merits and advantages of a patent needle-threader to interested crowds on Broadway. Here my oratorical abilities are advantageously displayed, my audiences are attentive, and my profits are good.

      [Exit Brown]

      THE WATCHWORD

      'Trust in the Lord, and keep your powder dry!'

        So cried stout OLIVER in the storm, before

        That redder rain on bloody Marston Moor,

      Which whelmed the flower of English chivalry.

      Repeat the watchword when the sullen sky

        Stoops with its weight of terror, while the roar

        Of the far thunder deepens, and no more

      God's gracious sunshine greets the lifted eye!

      Not Faith alone, but Faith with Action armed,

        Shall win the battle, when the anointed host

      Wars with the alien armies, and, unharmed,

        Snatch victory from a field where all seemed lost.

      Front Death and Danger with a level eye;

      Trust in the Lord, and keep your powder dry!

      TINTS AND TONES OF PARIS

      It is a curious test of national character to compare the prevalent impressions of one country in regard to another whereof the natural and historical description is quite diverse: and in the case of France and England, there are so many and so constantly renewed incongruities, that we must discriminate between the effect of immediate political jealousy, in such estimates, and the normal and natural bias of instinct and taste. To an American, especially, who may be supposed to occupy a comparatively disinterested position between the two, this mutual criticism is an endless source of amusement. In conversation, at the theatre, on the way from Calais or Dover to either capital, at a Paris café, or a London club-house, he hears these ebullitions of prejudice and partiality, of self-love or generous appreciation, and finds therein an endless illustration of national character as well as of human nature. But perhaps the literature of the two countries most emphatically displays their respective points of view and tone of feeling. While a popular French author sums up the elements of life in England as being la vie de famille, la politique, et les affaires,—'domestic life, politics, and business,'—he complacently infers that le fond du caractère Anglais, 'the basis of the English character,' is nothing more nor less than le manque de bonheur—'a want of anything like happiness.' An English thinker, on the other hand, finds in the very language of France the evidence of superficial emotion and unaspiring, irreverent intelligence. 'How exactly,' writes СКАЧАТЬ