now mind me.-Sir, shall I trouble you to die | fidant-but keep your madness in the backagain? Puff. Dear sir, you needn't speak that speech, as the body has walked off. Beef. That's true, sir-then I'll join the fleet. Puff. If you please.-[Exit BEEFEATER.] Now, who comes on? "Enter GOVERNOR, with his hair properly disordered. Gov. A hemisphere of evil planets reign! And every planet sheds contagious frenzy! My Spanish prisoner is slain! my daughter, Meeting the dead corse borne along, has gone Distract! [A loud flourish of trumpets. But hark! I am summon'd to the fort: Perhaps the fleets have met! amazing crisis! O Tilburina! from thy aged father's beard Sneer. Poor gentleman! Puff. Yes and no one to blame but his daughter! Dang. And the planets Puff. True.-Now enter Tilburina! Sneer. Egad, the business comes on quick here. Puff. Yes, sir-now she comes in stark mad in white satin. Sneer. Why in white satin? Puff. O Lord, sir-when a heroine goes mad, she always goes into white satin.-Don't she, Dangle? Dang. Always—it's a rule. Puff. Yes-here it is-[Looking at the book.] "Enter Tilburina stark mad in white satin, and her confidant stark mad in white linen." "Enter TILBURINA and CONFIDANT, mad, according to custom." Sneer. But, what the deuce, is the confidant to be mad too? Puff. To be sure she is; the confidant is always to do whatever her mistress does; weep when she weeps, smile when she smiles, go mad when she goes mad.-Now, madam con ground, if you please. says A whale's a bird?-Ha! did you call, my He's here! he's there!-He's everywhere! Puff. There, do you ever desire to see anybody madder than that? Sneer. Never while I live! Puff. You observed how she mangled the metre? Dang. Yes-egad, it was the first thing made me suspect she was out of her senses. Sneer. And pray what becomes of her? Puff. She is gone to throw herself into the sea, to be sure-and that brings us at once to the scene of action, and so to my catastrophemy sea-fight, I mean. Sneer. What, you bring that in at last? Puff. Yes, yes-you know my play is called The Spanish Armada; otherwise, egad, I have no occasion for the battle at all.-Now then for my magnificence!-my battle!—my noise! -and my procession!-You are all ready? Und. Promp. [Within.] Yes, sir. Puff. Is the Thames dressed? "Enter THAMES with two ATTENDANTS." Thames. Here I am, sir. Puff. Very well, indeed!-See, gentlemen, there's a river for you!-this is blending a little of the masque with my tragedy-a new fancy, you know-and very useful in my case; for as there must be a procession, I suppose Thames, and all his tributary rivers, to compliment Britannia with a fête in honour of the victory. Sneer. But pray, who are these gentlemen in green with him? Puff. Those?-those are his banks. Sneer. His banks? Puff. Yes, one crowned with alders, and the other with a villa!-you take the allusions?But hey! what the plague! you have got both your banks on one side. Here, sir, come round. -Ever while you live, Thames, go between your banks.-[Bell rings.] There, so, now for't!— Stand aside, my dear friends!-Away, Thames! [Exit THAMES between his banks. [Flourish of drums, trumpets, cannon, &c. &c. Scene changes to the sea-the fleets engage-the music plays "Britons Strike Home."-Spanish fleet destroyed by fire-ships, &c.-English fleet advances -music plays "Rule Britannia.”The procession of all the English rivers, and their tributaries, with their emblems, &c., begins with Handel's water music, ends with a chorus to the march in Judas Maccabæus.-During this scene, PUFF directs and applauds everything—then Puff. Well, pretty well-but not quite perfect. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you please, we'll rehearse this piece again to-morrow. [Curtain drops. THE TREASURE-SHIP. My heart is freighted full of love, With gems below and gems above, Full strings of nature's beaded pearl, And girdles wove of subtle sound, Before Love's arts and niceness were. And carcanets of living sighs; Gums that have dropped from Love's own stem, I wot, so rare and fine a gem I've cased the rubies of thy smiles, TO THE EVENING STAR. Star that bringest home the bee, Come to the luxuriant skies, Star of love's soft interviews, THOMAS CAMPBELL. HOW SHARP SNAFFLES GOT HIS CAPITAL AND WIFE. [William Gilmore Simms, LL.D., born in Charleston, South Carolina, 17th April, 1806; died there, 11th June, 1870. He was one of the most prolific writers of America. A mere catalogue of his works in poetry, fiction, drama, history, biography, criticism, and miscellaneous literature would fill a page. It will be sufficient to state that his best known works are a series of revolutionary and border romances, published in eighteen volumes, the most notable of which are-The Forayers, Mellichampe, Border Beagles, Woodcraft, and Beauchamp. Griswold, in the Prose Writers of America, says: "His (Mr. Simms') descriptions are bold and graphic, and his characters have considerable individuality. He is most successful in sketches of rude border life, in bustling, tumultuous action. The shorter stories of Mr. Simms are his best works. They have unity, completeness, and strength." Notwithstanding his vast literary labours, Mr. Simms took an active part in politics.-From Harper's Magaeine, Copyrighted, 1870, by Harper & Bros.] The day's work was done, and a good day's work it was. We had bagged a couple of fine bucks and a fat doe; and now we lay camped at the foot of the "Balsam Range" of mountains in North Carolina, preparing for our supper. We were a right merry group of seven four professional hunters, and three amateurs, myself among the latter. There was Jim Fisher, Aleck Wood, Sam or Sharp Snaffles alias "Yaou," and Nathan Langford alias the "Pious." These were our professional hunters. Our amateurs may well continue nameless, as their achievements do not call for any present record. There stood our tent pitched at the foot of the mountains, with a beautiful cascade leaping headlong toward us, and subsiding into a mountain runnel, and finally into a little lakelet, the waters of which, edged with perpetual foam, were as clear as crystal. Our baggage waggon, which had been sent round to meet us by trail routes through the gorges, stood near the tent, which was of stout army canvas. That baggage waggon held a variety of luxuries. There was a barrel of the best bolted wheat flour. There were a dozen choice hams, a sack of coffee, a keg of sugar, a few thousand of cigars, and last, not least, a corpulent barrel of Western usquebaugh, vulgarly "whisky," to say nothing of a pair of demijohns of equal dimensions, one containing peach brandy of mountain manufacture, the other the luscious honey from the mountain hives. The explanation soon followed. Saturday night is devoted by the mountaineers engaged in a camp hunt, which sometimes contemplates a course of several weeks, to stories of their adventures-"long yarns"chiefly relating to the objects of their chase and the wild experiences of their professional life. The hunter who naturally inclines to exaggeration is, at such a period, privileged to deal in all the extravagances of inventionnay he is required to do so! To be literal, or confine himself to the bald and naked truth, is not only discreditable, but a finable offence! He is, in such a case, made to swallow a long, strong, and difficult potation! He cannot be too extravagant in his incident; but he is also required to exhibit a certain degree of art in their use; and he thus frequently rises into a certain realm of fiction, the ingenuities of which are made to compensate for the exaggerations, as they do in the Arabian Nights and other Oriental romances. This will suffice for explanation. Nearly all our professional hunters assembled. on the present occasion were tolerable raconteurs. They complimented Jim Fisher by throwing the raw deer-skin over his shoulders; tying the antlers of the buck with a red handkerchief over his forehead; seating him on the biggest boulder which lay at hand; and, sprinkling him with a stoup of whisky, they christened him "The Big Lie" for the occasion. And in this character he complacently presided during the rest of the evening; till the company prepared for sleep, which was not till midnight, he was king of the feast. It was the duty of the "Big Lie" to regulate proceedings, keep order, appoint the raconteurs severally, and admonish them when he found them foregoing their privileges, and narrating bald, naked, and uninteresting truth. They must deal in fiction. Jim Fisher was seventy years old, and a veteran hunter, the most famous in all the country. He looked authority, and promptly began to assert it, which he did in a single word: "Yaou!" "Yaou" was the nom de nique of one of the hunters, whose proper name was Sam Snaffles, Supper over, and it is Saturday night. It but who, from his special smartness, had obtained the farther sobriquet of "Sharp | Snaffles." Columbus Mills whispered me that he was called "Yaou" from his frequent use of that word, which, in the Choctaw dialect, simply means "Yes." Snaffles had rambled consider ably among the Choctaws, and picked up a variety of their words, which he was fond of using in preference to the vulgar English; and his common use of "Yaou" for the affirmative had prompted the substitution of it for his own name. He answered to the name. "Ay-yee, Yaou," was the response of Sam. "I was afeard, 'Big Lie,' that you'd be hitching me up the very first in your team." Sam Snaffles swallowed his peach and honey at a gulp, hemmed thrice lustily, put himself into an attitude, and began as follows. I shall adopt his language as closely as possible; but it is not possible, in any degree, to convey any adequate idea of his manner, which was admirably appropriate to the subjectmatter. Indeed, the fellow was a born actor. The "Jedge" was the nom de guerre which the hunters had conferred upon me, looking, no doubt, to my venerable aspect-for I had travelled considerably beyond my teens-and the general dignity of my bearing. "You see, Jedge," addressing me especially as the distinguished stranger, "I'm a telling this hyar history of mine jest to please you, and I'll try to please you ef I kin. These fellows hyar have hearn it so often that they knows all about it jest as well as I do my own self, and they knows the truth of it all, and would swear to it afore any hunters' court in all the county, ef so be the affidavy was to be tooken in camp and on a Saturday night. "You see then, Jedge, it's about a dozen or fourteen years ago, when I was a young fellow without much beard on my chin, though I was full grown as I am now-strong as a horse, ef not quite so big as a buffalo. I was then jest a-beginning my 'prenticeship to the hunting business, and looking to sich persons as the 'Big Lie' thar to show me how to take the track of b'ar, buck, and painther. "But I confess I weren't a-doing much. I hed a great deal to l'arn, and I reckon I miss'd many more bucks than I ever hit-that is, jest up to that time "Look you, Yaou," said "Big Lie," interrupting him, "you're gitting too close upon the etarnal stupid truth! All you've been a-saying is jest nothing but the naked truth, as I knows it. Jest crook your trail!" "And how's a man to lie decently onless you lets him hev a bit of truth to go upon? The truth's nothing but a peg in the wall that hangs the lie upon. A'ter a while I promise that you sha'n't see the peg.' "Worm along, Yaou!" "Well, Jedge, I warn't a-doing much among the bucks yet-jest for the reason that I was quite too eager in the scent a'ter a sartin doe! Now, Jedge, you never seed my wife-my Merry Ann, as I calls her; and ef you was to see her now-though she's prime grit yit-you would never believe that, of all the womankind in all these mountains, she was the very yaller flower of the forest, with the reddest rose cheeks you ever did see, and sich a mouth, and sich bright curly hair, and so tall, and so slender, and so all over beautiful. O Lawd! when I thinks of it and them times, I don't see how 'twas possible to think of buck-hunting when thar was sich a doe, with sich eyes shining on me. Well, Jedge, Merry Ann was the only da'ter of Jeff Hopson and Keziah Hopson, his wife, who was the da'ter of Squire Claypole, whose wife was Margery Clough, that lived down upon Pacolet River "Look you, Yaou, ain't you getting into them derned facts agin, eh?" "I reckon I em, 'Big Lie.' 'Scuse me; I'll kiver the pegs direct-lie, one a'ter t'other. Whar was I? Ah! Oh! Well, Jedge, poor hunter and poor man— —jest, you see, a squatter on the side of a leetle bit of a mountain close on to Columbus Mills, at Mount Tryon, I was all the time on a hot trail a'ter Merry Ann Hopson. I went thar to see her a'most every night; and sometimes I carried a buck for the old people, and sometimes a doeskin for the gal; and I do think, bad hunter as I then was, I pretty much kept the fambly in deer meat through the whole winter. "Well, Jedge, though Jeff Hopson was glad enough to git my meat always, he didn't affection me as I did his da'ter. He was a sharp, close, money-loving old fellow, who was always considerate of the main chaince; and the old lady, his wife, who hairdly dare say her soul was her own, she jest looked both ways, as I may say, for Sunday, never giving a fair look to me or my chainces, when his eyes were sot on her. But 'twa'n't so with my Merry Ann. She hed the eyes for me from the beginning, and soon she hed the feelings; and, you see, Jedge, we sometimes did git a chaince, when old Jeff was gone from home, to come to a sort of onderstanding about our feelings; and the long and the short of it was that Merry Ann confessed to me that she'd like nothing better than to be my wife. She liked no other man but me. "Now, Jedge, a'ter that, what was a young fellow to do? That, I say, was the proper kind of incouragement. So I said, 'I'll ax your daddy.' Then she got scary, and said, 'Oh, don't, for somehow, Sam, I'm a-thinking daddy don't like you enough yit. Jest hold on a bit, and come often, and bring him venison, and try to make him laugh, which you kin do, you know, and a'ter a time you kin try him.' And so I did or rether I didn't. I put off the axing. I come constant. I brought venison all the time, and b'ar meat a plenty, a'most three days in every week. "Well, Jedge, this went on for a long time, a'most the whole winter, and spring, and summer, till the winter begun to come in agin. I carried 'em the venison, and Merry Ann meets me in the woods, and we hes sich a pleasant time when we meets on them little odd chainces that I gits hot as thunder to bring the business to a sweet honey finish. "But Merry Ann keeps on scary, and she puts me off, ontil, one day, one a'ternoon, about sundown, she meets me in the woods, and she's all in a flusteration. And she ups and tells me how old John Grimstead, the old bachelor (a fellow about forty years old, and the dear gal not yet twenty), how he's a'ter her, and bekaise he's got a good fairm, and mules and horses, how her daddy's giving him the open mouth incouragement. "Then I says to Merry Ann: I "You sees, I kain't put off no longer. must out with it, and ax your daddy at onst.' And then her scary fit come on again, and she begs me not to-not jist yit. But I swears by all the Hokies that I won't put off another day; and so, as I haird the old man was in the house that very hour, I left Merry Ann in the woods, all in a trimbling, and I jist went ahead, detarmined to have the figure straight, whether odd Here Yaou paused to renew his draught of peach and honey. "Well, Jedge, I put a bold face on the business, though my hairt was gitting up into my throat, and I was almost a-gasping for my breath, when I was fairly in the big room, and standing up before the old squaire. He was a-setting in his big squar hide-bottom'd armchair, looking like a jedge upon the bench jist about to send a poor fellow to the gallows. As he seed me come in, looking queer enough, I reckon, his mouth put on a sort of grin, "It's jest as well to git the worst at onst, and then thar'll be an eend of the oneasiness.’ So I up and told him, in pretty soft, smooth sort of speechifying, as how I was mighty fond of Merry Ann, and she, I was a-thinking, of me, and that I jest come to ax ef I might hev Merry Ann for my wife. "Then he opened his eyes wide, as ef he never ixpected to hear sich a proposal from me. "What!' says he. 'You?' "Jest so, squaire,' says I. 'Ef it pleases you to believe me, and to consider it reasonable, the axing.' 66 'He sot quiet for a minit or more, then he gits up, knocks all the fire out of his pipe on the chimney, fills it, and lights it agin, and then comes straight up to me, whar I was a-setting on the chair in front of him, and without a word he takes the collar of my coat betwixt the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and he says: "Git up, Sam Snaffles. Git up, ef you please.' "Well, I gits up, and he says: "Hyar. Come. Hyar.' "And with that he leads me right across the room to a big looking-glass that hung agin the partition wall, and thar he stops before the glass, facing it, and holding me by the collar all the time. "Now that looking-glass, Jedge, was about the biggest I ever did see. It was a'most three feet high, and a'most two feet wide, and it had a bright, broad frame, shiny like gold, with a heap of leetle figgers worked all round it. I reckon thar's no sich glass now in all the mountain country. 'Well, thar he hed me up, both on us standing in front of this glass, whar we could a'most see the whole of our full figgers from head to foot. "And when we hed stood thar for a minit. or so, he says, quite solemn like: "Look in the glass, Sam Snaffles. "So I looked. "Well,' says I. 'I sees you, Squaire Hopson, and myself, Sam Snaffles.' "Look good,' says he; 'obzarve well.' "Well,' says I, 'I'm a-looking with all my eyes. I only sees what I tells you.' "But you don't obzarve,' says he. 'Look ing and seeing's one thing,' says he, 'but ob zarving's another. Now obzarve.' |