Puck — February 27, 1878 — page 3: what you’re looking at

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

DESERTER. THE —In Bonemia, SALAD? Don't I say so? numb where They've felt the home-returning wanderer’s grip? I will, Put my umbrella somewhere Where it won't drip. Se Aren't your fingers Sit down? My book—that parcel—thanks! What is it? Mrs. Barbauld’s—no, I mean, Plato’s Nursery Rhymes— Burton's Anat—oh, never mind it! This is Just like old times. ‘Thank you, I zei// take something. No, not whiskey. I've cut that—oh dear, yes, of course! from choice. Jove! I feel younger—frisky— One of the boys. One lemonade! Give an account? Oh, I've been quite the rover “These two years—yes, I've only just got home. Set ont in April. Roughish passage over. Went first to Rome. I staid in Paris longer than I meant to: (I had to break the tp there coming back From Rome.) Bonn was the next place that T went to— Met you there, Jack. You, with an ancient relative and a Murra Relative’s dead? I hope he... .? Ab, that’s right! y. what made you leave in such a burry, On Christmas night ? T got engaged that last week in December. —Didn’t you meet the Carletons in Bordeaux? You knew the girls, Mine's Florry. You remen ‘The blonde, you know. You—what? God bless me! And you were refused, eh? Of course you were. ‘That's why you looked so blue ‘That Christmas? Ya-ast day. I called the following ‘T Sorry for you. Hope, though, since then, some fair maid has consoled you? No? Deuce you say. My wife— OF course Lam! Hadn't L told you? I thought I had. Poor fellow, that's too bad. Ah, boys! These pleasant memories stealing o'er me— I think I will take a Cabafia now. ‘Thank you, old man . . You'll have to roll it for me— I forget how. * * * * Well, this is pleasant. And beer. From youth's free spring once more I quafi, A wild Bohemian, Five o'clock? Good —gracious! So much? I'm offt "Bacco, tales vivacious, No, positively can't. My wife—my dinner, ‘Always in, evenings; people sometimes call, (Here, Jack! one word—no grudge against the winner? Shake!) Good-bye, all! And—I suppose my small domestic heaven Wouldn't much interest you? If it did— Fellows! come up next Sunday—tea at seven— And [Quick Currats] 11, C. Buswer. PUCK. THE ARION BALL. BY ONE WHO DOESN'T ENJOY HIMSELF. —y PRESUME all mask balls are more or less alike, ‘There must invariably be a certain number of people in remarkable disguises, worrying the life out of others who try to re- cognize them; there is sure to be a supper- room and a floor on which to dance. But at the Arion Ball, at Gilmore’s Garden, on Thurs- day last, these masquerade necessities were supplemented by so many luxuries of so many different kinds, that it seemed as though seve- ral dozen masked balls had been run into.one to completely upset the already partially flab- bergasted participant. ‘There was a procession at this ball. I don’t quite understand, myself, what a pro- cession is for. But that isa matter of minor consequence. ‘The procession was there, all the same. It unfolded itself like a many-colored dream, pregnant with soulful delirium. I shouldn't advise any pleasure seeker with an unbalanced temperament to try to grapple with a procession like that. It will be too much for him. He will feel as though some- thing had hit him in the head early in the morning, and he hadn’t recovered from it. ‘This procession represented Folly in many forms of the complaint. The beginning of it had a slow pulse, but it quickened toward the end. ‘The last man had it very bad. It is almost impossible to say definitely what this procession represented. Just as impossible as it would be to say what it didn’t represent. If there was anything on earth, above it or be- low it, that wasn’t raked into the show, I should like to have a photograph of it. The Arion mind is an inventive one. It turned Gilmore’s Garden inside out, to start with, and that was enough to tax any or- dinary ingenuity. And it soared into the realms of Politics, Fashion, Art, Literature and Science, and plucked the choicest flowers for its garland. Flowers is figurative. White-washers and wash- erwomen (colored)—this was one part of the procession—can scarcely be called flowers; neither can the tramps that were arrested by sham policemen, and locked up in a sham station-house. But you can call them anything you like. The ball is over now. I am holding the top of my head in my left hand as I write with the other. I feel tho- roughly convinced that I attended the Arion Rall. I don’t know whether it was the goose- liver I ate, or the conversation I had with a blonde young woman with black eyes, or the effects of the many lights on my stomach, but there is in my bosom a fierce longing for selt- zer-water that cannot be curbed. There is less misery in that truth than there is in the fact that I haven't got enough money left to pay for all the seltzer 1 am going to drink. But that is no more nor less than a natural result ! What can you expect else after a night's re- velry. I say revelry, because I fully believe that’s what the Arion ball was intended for, and that is what a delighted throng seemed to indulge in. As for me, individually, I started in with a disagreeable frame of mind, and none of the charms—and there really were charms —brought me any delight. Af revelry con- sisted of a systematic process of artificial ex- hilaration. There is nothing to be said in dis- paragement of their ball. It was a glorious success. It wasn’t the Arion’s fault that, when I just came forth after having disposed of my hat and coat with a fifty-cent check, I was seized upon by a stout lady whom I didn’t know, and earnestly besought. to take her to her box, as her husband had evidently forgotten her, and left her standing in the draught to take care of herself. I tried to look happy, but I had to say to her, “ Madame, I have brought a lady myself. She is waiting for me somewhere about here.’ “Oh, never mind her,” responded my new- found friend, as she took me by the arm and led me up some steps into a crowd. Now or never was my time to escape. I dodged behind a fellow disguised as a gumbo- tree; and when I looked up, two minutes after, I saw the gumbo-tree tugging away like grim Seah, trying to lead the stout lady into her Ox. I then found my own fair one and took her on to the floor. I hadn't had her there for more than a minute before she tapped some fine-luoking chap on the head with her fan and vanished. I concluded after that to devote myself ex- clusively to admiring the procession that had just begun, and let all the fair ones at the ball take care of themselves. It wasn’t the Arion’s fault that I happened to be in the way of the first clown who came rushing out to clear the road for the proces- sion, and that I was laid flat on my back and run over by three or four clowns before it was noticed that something had to be picked up. I frantically clutched for my eyeglasses, that had been torn from the string and caught in ibe lace trimming of a domino some three feet off. When the domino saw me make a mysterious dive for the lower portion that contained my property, it gave a shriek, and I felt almost compromised. When I clutched the glasses and held them aloft, the domino saw them and heaved a sigh of relief. But certainly the Arion is not’ to blame for my being nearsighted and compelled to wear glasses. Those glasses were knocked off a second time by the imitation snowballs that were thrown by the “snow elves;” and all I could see of that part of the show was an odd-look- ing white thing (which I subsequently learnt was a snow-man) hopping about in a sort of intoxication. I discovered my glasses in time to see the “ Arrest of the Tramps” by a burlesque police- man. That policeman was nearsighted, too, I suppose, for he must have taken me fora tramp, when he clubbed me over the head with such zeal and energy. I then determined to get out of the way of the procession. I did this for personal safety. But when once I surrendered my position in front, I was so pushed and jostled and hurried, that I had reached the outside of the crowd before I recovered my normal condition. And then the view of the show was entirely lost to me. But it is an ill-wind, etc. I had landed alongside ofa pink, blue-and-green domino, who caught me by the arm and whispered my name. It was some comfort to be recognized. But “who are you?" I asked her. She wouldn’t tell me. This kind of thing is supposed to be enjoy- able. It isn’t the Arion’s fault that I didn’t think so. As I hadn't the slightest idea who the lady was I was talking to, and as she didn’t give me the faintest cue by her conversation, our dialogue was limited to a mutual exchange of absurd comments on things, which only terminated by my breaking loose from her when I caught sight of a friend looking as disconsolate as I know I must have looked. “Jack,” said 1, ‘come and take a drink.” I struck a sympathetic chord at once. He yielded without a moment's delay. If it hadn’t been that Jack had made an engagement to dance a galop, I should have