Life — December 24, 1885 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

-LIFE- Judic, in the soldier's costume of the third act, is delight- fully womanly and unutterably chic. Lotta is ineffably vul- gar. One feels inclined to arrest her for masquerading in men’s clothes. Perhaps you will say that respecting the question of pi- rouetting the grapes are sour in Mme. Judic’s case. She is too plump to pirouette. My dear fellow, she wasn’t always plump any more than you have always been twenty-one. And she never indulged in quips and cranks. It isn’t artistic, dear boy. Still, my fine correspondent, there was decidedly more wholesome mirth in the Standard “ Nitouche” than there was in the Wallack production. Lotta is at times inimitable .and has the advantage of looking extremely youthful. 369 Judic is ‘superfluously and adiposely matron-like, which is neither here nor there as far as Mile. Nitouche is con- cerned. Don't allow your friends to persuade you that you are an ass, dear boy, and in the name of everything that is priggish don’t ever say you prefer Judic merely because she comes Europe. Join the “ Americani sumus ” crowd and never from fear. My only anxiety is lest your preferencee for Lotta be the preference of the bald-headed seat owners. Be on your guard, dear boy. Don’t join the ranks of those gentlemen, for once there you must stay there. No remedy has ever becn discovered for them, though nearly every barber in the world thinks he knows a cure. Alan Dale. FATHER CHRISTMAS AT WASHINGTON. OUR correspondent, while wandering aimlessly about Washington last evening, ran abruptly into an old gentleman who looked something like a Senator, and very much like a Supreme Court Judge, with a suspicion of the office-seeker in his deep blue eye. “Hello, Lire,” said he, “ You in this cold place, too?” And then I knew by whom I was addressed. It was my old friend Father Christmas. “Well, old man,” said I, “this is a great pleasure. 1 did n't expect to see you around.” “Did n't eh, well it’s the first Christmas I've known yet when my presents was n't expected.” “Come off the ventilator, Nick, your pun is as bad as your grammar,” I replied, “and, if you don’t reform, 1 'll close my chimney against you forever.” “That soots me,” returned the incorrigible Santa, but with a smile of such sadness that your correspondent had n't the heart to strike him—except for the usual remembrance. “What are you looking so sad about, Claus?” I asked. “Ah, Carlyle, you don’t know what I've gone through with this last year. It nearly broke my heart when the Grand Old Party went out. I'd gone on so many years with them that I knew their ways, and when Christmas came around there was always some little back door for me to crawl through, and of late years the chimney racket, as far as I ‘was concerned, was a big sinecure. Then, too, there was n't a year but what I could get a new turnout, reindeer, sleigh and bells, under the Stationery appropriation for the Treas- ury Department or the Navy, if I'd chosen to ask for it Now look at this blanked administration! Why, when I knocked at Cleveland's door last night, he would n't let me in unless I'd pass some infernal Civil Service examina- tion, and when I intimated that I thought past services ought to go for something, he scratched his head and called a mect- ing of the Cabinet to discuss the possibility of bouncing me as an offensive partisan !” “ That 's hard luck enough,” I replied. “ What did you do?” “Oh, I told him not to be so high. I had inflooence.” “Did he simmer ?” “Simmer? Well, I guess not. He smiled like a Jeffer- sonian simpleton, and told me to take my inflooence up the flue where I came from, but I'll make it hot for this Adminis- tration yet. Cleveland will hang up his sock on Christmas Eve, and he'll find something in it in the morning that'll make him wish he ‘d stayed at Buffalo!” “Do n't do anything rash, Santa,” I put in. “ Nothing rash about it,” he replied so hotly that the snow upon his shoulders rolled off in a torrent; “but if Pulitzer will rent me that patent medicine wood-cut the World uses for its galaxy of celebrities, I ‘ll label it Grover Cleveland as a Boy, and if that do n't strike him to the quick, or slow either, my name is not S. Claus of Clausburg !” “ That 's rough, old man, but you ‘ve had provocation.” “Right you are, my boy; but, say, tell me one thing, will you? You're well acquainted about Washington, and I want to know something about a new-fangled notion some of these proud aristocrats have got hold of. There's a chimney here that I suppose I ‘ve got to look into, but I ‘ve been over it for the last three nights looking for a hole, and I’m blessed if I can find a pore in the whole darn business. “Sealed chimney? Where?” “There! See that thing looming up over there ?” he an- swered. “Santa,” I said, “you are either drunk or dreaming. That's not a chimney. It’s the Washington Monument. It was perhaps too sudden a revelation, for the old man dropped, and when I left him they were trying to find enough water in the Capitol to bring him to. Carlyle Smith. comicbooks.com