Life — April 3, 1884 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

tiny if Hf 1) AU ALL IN A NUTSHELL. Froin over the fence: “S'Pos—E YOU'SE GOT ALL DE NEWS DIS MORNIN‘, BRER PEWTER?” Brer Pewter: “YAas, PRETTY MUCH ALL. DEy Is HAVIN’ GREAT TIMES DOWN IN AFRICA. YOU KNOW, DE ENGLISH TO HAB A CHINESE NAMED GORDON MADE PRESIDENT OF A TOWN DAR CALLED SKINCAT AND DE DEMOCRATS BEING STRICTLY OPPOSED TO DE CHINESE, WANTS A FALSE PROPHET, CALLED Et TILDEN, SO THE FRENCH IS STEPPED IN AND DEY IS HABING SOM PRETTY SEVERE FIGHTIN’ IN DAT LOCALITY.” TWO IDLE EYES. (RONDEAU.) ‘WO idle eyes I watch her raise To mine in sweet, coquettish ways ; The white lids on their velvet hinges Lift slowly, and beneath the fringes A pair of brilliant love-lights blaze. A happy moth am I, that plays About these flames with longing gaze ; I love the fire, my wings hat singes, To idolize. Muse, teach me in befitting phrase To speak, while this illusion stays, The truth, and banish guilty tinges That burn my cheeks. My conscience twinges While I confess this paltry praise— Two idle lies! F.D.S. “Wuy does the moon rise?” The reason is scientific: It comes up in the yEast. BENEATH contempt—the man whose arguments I cannot answer. THE report that the Czar of Russia eats large quantities of arsenic for his complexion is said to be dis- couraging to the Nihilists. Tue way of the transgressor is— Canada. For rent—A needle and thread. MorTo for the poker-player—None so “blind” as those who won’t “see.” Ad astra per aspera— Jordan am a hard'road to trabbel.” FOLKS WANTS “THERE’s a divinity doth shape our end, rough-Hewitt as we may.”— Member from New York. HYSTERICAL PLAYS. F there is one thing that is more irritating than another, it is the hysterical play. The hysterical play is a work com- pounded of unlimited emotion—emotion by the hogshead—and a half-gill of logic. When a woman bursts into tears, though she ought to be placid and self-possessed, you know that she is ridiculous. You say to yourself, “This creature has no sense.” Possibly you say to yourself, if you like emphatic Saxon, ‘‘ This fool is an idiot.” Now, a woman who has salt in her eye, when she might smile with propriety, is like the hysterical play in which characters do precisely what they would not do in actual life. I have observed—not without that peculiar sensation that learned philosophers describe as ‘‘ sitting on pins and needles ””— many hysterical plays, extravagant pieces in which various per- sons torture themselves uselessly, and turn practical matters into deep mysteries. The average hysterical heroine is one of the penalties of theatre-going. She was evolved from a colorless sentimentalism, and she is now the weeping and wriggling exponent of wretchedness. One is inclined to laugh at her, be- cause she seems to be immensely happy in the midst of her agony. She has the art of blubbering at her finger-ends, comicbooks.com