Life — February 14, 1884 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TOMMY. LITTLE Tommy, the kid, Was gentle and kind, Just an innocent baby ‘As ever you'd find ; He frisked and he jumped, ‘And whatever he’d do Was thought wondrous funny ; But Tommy—he grew. Big Tommy, the Goat, No longer a snoozer— Had horns long and sharp, Which he knew how to use, sir ; He ruined the clothes, He ate up the cabbages, And the neighbors at last Sued his master for damages. He was a prisoner in the police court, “He limped, your honor, pretend- ing he was lame, and was begging,” said the policeman. He was fined five dollars by the Justice, who remarked that his limpid ways were too trarisparent. THE DARWINIAN’S VALENTINE. WHEN you and I were monkeys, A million years ago, We lived amid the nutmeg trees On the coast of Borneo. So many other things we did, My recollection fails ; But where we could n’t use our paws, We hung on with our tails. But since we've shuffled off these tails, Have hands instead of paws; We must, like human bipeds, live Obedient to the laws. Ape, monkey and chimpanzee ! Love led * a your line, And bids us choose each other For a life-long valentine. A. A.W. HE who bloweth his own trumpet awakeneth the sweetest echoes.— Joseph Cook. SENS (Nol) A TOUCHING STORY. His new French valet: “O, M’steuR, SUCH A MALHEUR! I pur ZE PARCEL UNDER MY ARM INSTRUCTED ME, TO FIFTY-SEVENTH STREET AND I COME TO ZE HOUSE, AND I LOOK UNDER MY ARM AND ZE PARCEL VAS GONE!! !! !!” AND I GO VERRA QUICK AS M’sIEUR ALPINE ROSES. ME H. H. BOYESEN is a clever and accomplished literary man. At any rate, he was clever and accomplished until a fewrinhts ago, when—inspired by a fatal ambition—he produced his first play,‘ Alpine Roses,” at the Madison Square Theatre, His purpose was hanless, undoubtedly ; the play was meant as a simple, unpretentious, right little thing, nothing | by several esteemed but excited contemporaries. more ; what is also to the point, this was Mr. Boyesen’s single indiscretion in writing for the stage. On the morning after the production of his piece, however, Mr. Boyesen must have Jooked upon himself with new eyes, If he had posed as an iconoclast of the stage, with the egotism and pomposity of a reformer, he could not have been considered with more solemnity than he was Most of the theatrical critics seemed to take it for granted that Mr. Boyesen’s aspiration o’erleapt itself. They handled him with sapient profundity. The play, they found, was not the ultimatum of genius, It was not great, original, nor powerful. It told an old story. Its motive was inadequate and rococo, Its characters were unreal. Its dialogue was monotonous and colorless. One journal, which attacked it with savage levity ; which, as it were, raised poor Boyesen’s scalp and then whooped lustily, described ‘ comicbooks.com