Puck — August 29, 1877 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

“Why is this?” he said. Where is John Quincy Adams ? “He is gone to the Common,” was the reply. Owing (0 the absence of a member of the Hancock family, the local butcher-shop was also closed. | It is estimated that there was more retail par triotism that day around the margin of that sacred pool than has ever been seen there since. Boston is now purely sesthetic. ‘The Adamses have yone into the statesman and ice-cream freezing business. | ‘The Hancocks are extinet. John Hancock, on being permitted to sign the Declaration of Independence, covered so much of the paper that his associates were obliged to ask him if he thought: that congress had convened solely for the purpose of adver- tising his trademark, He replied that they did not come from Hos- ton, but were outside barbarians. Which led to his retirement from this vale of tears. But we anticipate. Boston being, so to speak, on her Athenian car, a party of delegates from the best families, including four Adamses, met in secret on the night of the 16th of December, 1774. ‘They disguised themselves as Indians. Akeen eye might have penetrated the dis- guise, owing to their using a better grade of spirits than those which they usually sold the ileless aborigine. But as they waited for Night to throw her veil over the deed of valor which they contem- plated, it made no matter. As soon as darkness arrived, they marched on the two teaships and made an attack which for desperate courage and superhuman hardi- hood has but few parallels in history. The execution done among the tea-chests was something wonderful. feat was complete and immediate. When the fearful fight was over, and the tender stars looked down pityingly upon the scene of carnage, the victors, elate and flushed with triumph, (except the four Adamses -they were not flushed) returned to their homes, and casting aside their warrior disguise, called their sons to their knees and said : “My children, yo down to the point at the end of the bay, where the current drifts things | in to the stern and rock-bound shore, and scoop for that tea.” tonished heir de: (To be continued.) “THE DANITES.” New York, Angust 2gth, 1877. Dear Luck: He. stood on the highest peak of the moun- | tain range, bared his manly bosom to the | | breeze, clasped the welkin in his soul’s embrace, deank in the sweetness of eternal space, and | burst forth in melodious rapture—something | after this fashion: * Eternal yearning of eternal years, Where is the boundless henison of tears, Beneficent lingo? Ah, Ether! Spirit-balm of mortal cla Fill, fill my thirsting soul! —1'll write a play, By Jingo!” or words to that effect, and then he sat down and wrote out the Dramatis Persone, and cast | general “ breakdown grand step, and who will go to sce the play wherever it is pro: | duced through the country. ‘The McKee Rankin heart must: be gratified. ‘The Joaquin Miller soul can yearn for no more, With these cheering apophthegms, which will still remain in spite of whatever else I may sub- sequently say, Lhope the Poet of the Sundown Seas will grant me a little of that unshackled speech which is so essentially his, and permit | me to forget his leviathan genius in the ab- stract, and unbosom inyself after my own fash- ion. 1 took Araminta to see “The Danites.”” Sierras, but she revels in his verses, which draws, her a little nearer to him. “Now, Silas, who would have thought,” she observed to me between one of the acts, ‘that Ae could have written sach a play ?” “ Nobody,” was my terse respon “Why, it's real flesh-and-blood-like, isn’t it? Real men, who talk in real bad English 2” “All except Sandy,” L chimed in. “Don't you think he's a littie, as. it were—if I may so call it—that is to say: ns “Oa, yes, he's a little Joaquin Millerish, but that’s all right. Don't you sce he’s called a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a mighty moralist, on the bills?” and she pointed to the pro- gramm Araminta always points to the programme when she is short of an argument, It is a clincher. Once more | admired the practical side of the poct's nature. He could not altogether forswear his bursts of soul in speeches about stars and moonbeams and sunshine and clouds and things, so he gives | them all to one man to handle, and calls him all these different names in the programme. He redeems this by dignifying one of the ther characters with the title of “Grasshopper Jake, the Cinnamon-haired Barkeeper of the Howling Wilderness,” and the critical mind is appeased. “The Danites" has a plot that interests you to an unusual degree. You wish occasionally that the story were not interrupted by outbursts of Joaquin Millerisms, | but you put up with these in your anxiety to know how it is all going to end. Of course, not knowing to what extremes the practically-poctic author may go to estab- | lish himself as a dramatist of “ contempora- neous human interest,” you can’t really make up your mind whether the curtain will fall on a by all the characters, with supes joining in the chorus, or on another murder or a real hanging-scene. But you wait until the curtain falls. | | Araminta is a great drop from the Poet of the | | derness aforesaid. Mr. and Mrs. MeKee Rankin lor Sandy McGee | and Nancy Williams. ‘This was the first step —the the marvelously practical step. ‘The manner in which poetry and prose were Wlended in this particular instance is a phg- nomenon of the human mind. ‘The McKee Rankins paid several thousand dollars for the distinction by the Poct of the Sundown Seas, and the latter rendered thanks to the blue ether. [tis but justice to say that the MeKee Ran kins yot their money's wort “The Danites—such is the play that was brought out at the Broadway ‘Theatre, last Wed- nesday night, with the poct-author's seal upon it —proved more than five acts of ethereal ex- panse, and made a success. There was a triumph for the poetic mind of the boundless West. A real, unromantic practical success, with the ring of the dollar in it- the dollar of our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and cousins, And_ isn’t that a triumph for the American | na? | | | | j di There were lots of things that puzzled Ara + minta, She wanted to know why the truly goal school-teacher, the only lady in the Howl ing Wilderness, should, on’ her arrival, take a lodging over the bar-room crowded with twenty | ‘odd nincr:,and come sailing down every five | | minutes to give one or the other a chance | | tomake up to her, She wanted to know why this same truly good teacher should come to j the * Howling Wilderness” at all when there were no children to teach, and (this was the | source of the most distress to Araminta) why | Billy Piper, who is Nancv Williams in disguise, — | shouldn't let Sandy into her secret, when by so doing she would ‘save three acts of so much misery and despair. | But 1 smiled at Araminta’s simplicity, and said “Don't you see that’s where the Poet of | the Sundown Seas shows that he is a true dra- | | matist? ‘That's stage effect 1" {| ‘There is no doubt of it. Mr, Miller is alive to the wants of the modern public, He | has even got a Chinaman in the play. Bret | Harte had better look to his laurels. He hasn’t one broadcloth swell though, and that is the greatest of all its merits. | He hasn't overburdened the play with cheap attempts at funny business. For which let us render more thanks, ‘The Judge whom he has. introduced. is really ainusing— from his unstrained simplicity. ‘There's enough of the Chinaman to lighten the scenes. Any more of him would make the play as bad as “Ah Sin.” | he Danites” is the best Californian drama | yet presented, Joaquin, you lusty versifier, I grasp your prac- | tical palm, and pat you on your boundless | back ! | Go it again! Leave out a few yards of gush next time and don’t do quite so many irrational things, but let your situations be as good as they are in this, your first attempt, and a all, see that your characters are as well | as they are in “The Danites.” Besides Mr. McKee Rankin, Mr. Aldrich distinguished himself for an excellent perform- ance of Charlie Godfrey, the rejected lover, j Mr Lytell for a neat performance of the | Judge, anid Messrs. Vining Bowers and Harry Pratt for a miner and a Chinaman, both | played well and with becoming restraint. | Of the Indies, Miss Lillie Eldridge was too | passive as the School-mistress, afterwards | the wife of Sandy AleGee; Miss Ada Gil- |man did a good character sketch as a rough girl called Bunker Hill, and Miss Kitty | | | Blanchard (Mrs. McKee Rankin) played Nancy Williams, afterwards Billy Piper, the most ar- duous part of all, She did it earnestly and intelligently. Butshe lacked flexibility—in all but her knee-juints, which were called into ac- tive requisition as Billy Piper. “The Danites” was placed on the stage | magnificently. ‘The last scene, “‘ The Golden | Gulch,” was especially beautiful and worthy of | | | | the pen-pictures of the Poet Dramatist. | | Koundlessly yours, i Sitas Drier. | P, S.—The Broadway ‘Theatre has been con- | | siderably renovated ; but the man who claims | that the new curtain is a work of art ought to hide his diminished head in the Howling Wi | Ss. D. ‘THeRe was a well-defined and fatal case of | Asiatic cholera in the Sixth Ward last Monday. And what adds to the gloom of this announce- memt is the fact that Eli Perkins was not the | | victim. comicbooks.com