Life — February 14, 1884 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

LIFE spoken Alpine maids who meet romantic young noblemen and, asa rule, marry them or are betrayed by them. Nevertheless, in spite of his conventional starting-point, Mr. Boyesen has car- ried his play forward with freshness and vigor. The romantic nobleman in this case is an entertaining and humorous fellow, who is not sure whether he loves one sister or the other. The sisters are charming realities, though unnecessarily idealized for the Alpine business. The intrigue into which they fall is not especially extravagant in a romantic play. There is honest, out- door passion in the strong love episode of the play. The devo- tion of Ilka to Hansel, and the spontaneous warmth of this savage mountaineer, are entirely genuine, Irma, the other sister, is buoyant and gay, but capable of self-sacrifice and deep love. Finally, Mr, Boyesen’s story, with its drawbacks and charms, is coherently and picturesquely shown in action, and its situations are imagined rationally. The characters strike one as human characters of the average sort, chiefly because they are composed of various elements. An absolute character, of the average sort, is not apt to be an abstraction of virtue or vice. There is, of course, romantic exaggeration, as there is romantic convention- alism, in Mr. Boyesen’s play. No one would call this an original or lasting work. But it is a clear, interesting work from its own point of view, and it'is written with discrimination and fancy. The poetic earnestness which is given to the speed of Hansel and Ilka is certainly unlike the flippant good-humor of Dornfeld, the vulgar candor of Hahn, the worldly talk of Steinegg, or the stately utterance of Countess von Dornfeld. Mr. Boyesen has made a good beginning. He has not been unsuccessful. G. E. M. RENDER. VNTO SCISSORS THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE 5CISSORS - DUDETIC LEAP YEAR. He. HE jigjog swings on the cradleberry bough, T The mollycod pines on the lea ; The tittlebat squirbles his love-born vow, So, so, dearest maid, love I thee. She. Down where the crocodile smiles in the sun, There, there, darling kid, should we flee ; And oh! like the winkywunk when the day is done, I skittle if I tottle not to thee. He. The felis bug gurgles his song in the air, ‘The organ lugger trills for you and me ; The perrygram skiddles the old armchair, Thus, thus, Dalmanutha, love I thee. She. And oh! Onesiphorus, the old brown mare Is spavining for love, as also we; And up where the minister waits in his lair, I shall giggle if I skedaddle not with thee. “ Dip you put it in with tacks or putty ?” asked a merchant traveler for a Pittsburgh glass house, as he gazed, in an absent-minded way, at the hotel clerk’s diamond,—Merchant Traveler. AN Indian named ‘‘ Man-Afraid-of-Nothing” married a white wo- man in Montana recently, and in one week after the wedding applied to his tribe to have his name changed.—Aismarck Tribune. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS was one of the first men to ‘go West.” —Texas Siftings. A Mullion Dollars OF INSURANCE ON THE LIVES OF “City of Columbus” or THE VICTIMS OF THE “Crested Butte Mine,” IF THEY HAD HELD IT, COULD AND WOULD HAVE BEEN PAID WITHOUT DELAY OR DEDUCTION, BY The Travelers Life and Accident Insurance Company : OF HARTFORD, CONN. Any other Accident Company in America would be destroyed by it! OR ANYTHING LIKE IT. We have a surplus of nearly $2,000,000 to meet just such emergencies. With all this Security, our rates are very low, and our contract clear and equitable. We issue also Life Policies of every desirable form. Apply at once to any Agent, or the Home Office at Hartford. JAMES G. BATTERSON, President. RODNEY DENNIS, Secretary. JOHN E. MORRIS, Asst. Secretary. comicbooks.com