Part 6 (2/2)
The first thing we saw were two little boys doing tricks on a horizontal bar.
Our friend was about to repeat his customary programme of flying and cursing, but we restrained him. We a.s.sured him that he would really see a grown-up person if he waited a bit, so he sat out the boys and also their little sister on a bicycle and waited for the next item.
It turned out to be an infant phenomenon who sang and danced in fourteen different costumes, and we once more fled.
Our friend said he could not go home in the state he was then; he felt sure he should kill the twins if he did. He pondered for awhile, and then he thought he would go and hear some music. He said he thought a little music would soothe and enn.o.ble him--make him feel more like a Christian than he did at that precise moment.
We were near St. James' Hall, so we went in there.
The hall was densely crowded, and we had great difficulty in forcing our way to our seats. We reached them at length, and then turned our eyes toward the orchestra.
”The marvelous boy pianist--only ten years old!” was giving a recital.
Then our friend rose and said he thought he would give it up and go home.
We asked him if he would like to try any other place of amus.e.m.e.nt, but he said ”No.” He said that when you came to think of it, it seemed a waste of money for a man with eleven children of his own to go about to places of entertainment nowadays.
THE COMIC LOVERS.
Oh, they are funny! The comic lovers' mission in life is to serve as a sort of ”relief” to the misery caused the audience by the other characters in the play; and all that is wanted now is something that will be a relief to the comic lovers.
They have nothing to do with the play, but they come on immediately after anything very sad has happened and make love. This is why we watch sad scenes on the stage with such patience. We are not eager for them to be got over. Maybe they are very uninteresting scenes, as well as sad ones, and they make us yawn; but we have no desire to see them hurried through. The longer they take the better pleased we are: we know that when they are finished the comic lovers will come on.
They are always very rude to each other, the comic lovers. Everybody is more or less rude and insulting to every body else on the stage; they call it repartee there! We tried the effect of a little stage ”repartee”
once upon some people in real life, and we wished we hadn't afterward.
It was too subtle for them. They summoned us before a magistrate for ”using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace.” We were fined 2 pounds and costs!
They are more lenient to ”wit and humor” on the stage, and know how to encourage the art of vituperation. But the comic lovers carry the practice almost to excess. They are more than rude--they are abusive.
They insult each other from morning to night. What their married life will be like we shudder to think!
In the various slanging matches and bullyragging compet.i.tions which form their courts.h.i.+p it is always the maiden that is most successful.
Against her merry flow of invective and her girlish wealth of offensive personalities the insolence and abuse of her boyish adorer cannot stand for one moment.
To give an idea of how the comic lovers woo, we perhaps cannot do better than subjoin the following brief example:
_SCENE: Main thoroughfare in populous district of London. Time: Noon. Not a soul to be seen anywhere._
_Enter comic loveress R., walking in the middle of the road._
_Enter comic lover L., also walking in the middle of the road._
_They neither see the other until they b.u.mp against each other in the center._
HE. Why, Jane! Who'd a' thought o' meeting you here!
SHE. You evidently didn't--stoopid!
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