Scythe.
Man is like a reversed vegetable that has swallowed its roots and walked off on its branches. Why, what is that at my feet? Let me pick it up tenderly. Hurrah! I’ve got a geologic pebble! See, Mayor Whetstone, what a rare, grand specimen for the prehistoric museum of the Cornville Academy!
Whetstone.
What’s it worth?
Scythe.
Worth! Mercenary man! Let us reverently take off our hats in its presence. It’s worth more than all the property in Cornville. See, Major, see!
Bluegrass.
Put it in your pocket, or some one will claim it.
Scythe.
Unfeeling man! No one shall claim it. You saw me pick it up. You are my witnesses.
Bluegrass.
To what geologic family does it belong?
Scythe.
It is a genuine relic of the cosmic dust. Hurrah! I’ve got a geologic pebble! See the fluted sheets of color pervading its interior! It must have been suspended in the pre-Adamite fires for ages. Gentlemen, remember you have seen no meteors in the sky.
[Taking out his note-book and writing.
Enter Small Boy, crying.
Boy.
Give me my marble!
Scythe.
Why, boy, this is no marble. ’Tis a very rare specimen of the dewdrop form of crystallization, precipitated during the prevalence of the primeval sand-storms, formed by the cooling of the stony vapors.
Boy.
Give me my marble, or I’ll call my mother!
Whetstone.
Professor, you may have picked up the wrong specimen.
Scythe.
There can be no mistake. Let me examine it with my microscope. [Examining it.] I clearly recognize the uniformity of its circular strata of color, which could be formed only as it revolved on its own incandescent axis in super-heated fires. Boy, look through this glass, and then see if you have the youthful cheek to say it is—I tremble to say it—your marble.
Boy [looking at it through the glass].
That’s my colored marble; I was playing with it. [To Whetstone and Bluegrass.] Make him give it back to me, won’t you? It has a nick and the first letter of my name on it.
Scythe [surprisedly, re-examining it].
Why, boy, I cannot afford an unscientific controversy with you or your mother. Alas! take it. [Giving marble to the Boy.] And when again you play with it, remember— [Exit Boy, hastily.] Thus do my hopes of a pre-Adamite museum wither. It was a unique specimen of the circular group of crystallization dreamed of by science, but hitherto undiscovered. Major, here comes your seamaid.
Enter Catharine in disguise, with a basket of fish.
Catharine.
Good afternoon, gentlemen landsmen! I have fish in my basket; will you buy? I have your fortunes in my keeping; will you have them?
Bluegrass.
I salute you, by the sea, as a near relative in the fields of romance to the milking-maid of our inland pastures.
Catharine.
I take you to be landsmen, and, therefore, good fresh men. I am a fortune-teller with varied fortunes. Each summer, for a month, to these shores I come to renew and perfect the spirit’s vision, which, even like natural sight, is cleared by good free air and sunshine; and as men with glasses have seen ten hundred living things upon a pin’s point, so I, with spiritual lenses, have seen the past, present, and future, each in proper order, marshalled upon a space no larger than a spectacle glass.
Whetstone.
Pardon me,—your name and home?
Catharine.
My name is Catharine, and my home is wherever I am. I come from the city, where there are more sharks in one day than you will see here in a year, and where people in despair come to me for the fortune fate has denied them. I am more pitiful than fate; and their pleased looks give me a joy greater than does their pittance. Hence, poor souls, I give them precious pictures of future good, which, believing in, they achieve, and thus their griefs assuage.
Bluegrass.
We all, to-day, bear our fortunes lightly.
Catharine.
And may you at nightfall bear them as lightly! Fine weather makes quick friends. Come, then, gentlemen, will you buy? Each one in his own humor. If there be a true merchant among you, I will tempt him with the fish’s weight; if there be a moralist, with the fish’s moral; if there be a scientist, with the fish’s complicated structure; if there be a poet, with the fish’s most poetical history; if there be a gourmand, with the fish’s flavor. Each one shall see in the fish he buys, his own humor. He shall have both weight and moral; for a good moral without weight is immoral, and a good weight without a good moral is a dull measure. You shall pay me for the weight, for that the fish had in the sea; but for the moral, that is in my humor, and gain has taken a vacation. Every one has his pastime, and no one is so poor but he has his humor. Mine is to see men buy a fish, each in his own humor; for by the fish’s scales will I weigh him.
Scythe.
How came your hair so white at your age?
Catharine.
With losing of my husband, and giving of good fortunes. But come, gentlemen; fair weather makes quick friends, but unfair questions, like unfair weather, part them. Will you buy?
Bluegrass.
Let us buy.
Whetstone.
Let us first learn the price of the fish.
Bluegrass.
It sounds to me like a romance. Come, let us all sit here in pleasant converse; the night is afar, and while we buy we’ll enjoy the aroma of the salt-sea zephyrs blown from off the invisible flower-beds of the sea.
Whetstone.
Stop your perpetual romance!
Bluegrass.
Romance that is not perpetual, but goes by fits and starts, is not worth the reality it feeds upon.
Whetstone.
I’d put the price on everything,—trees, fences, houses, the baby’s rattle, and in its first primer a price-list of its expenses.
Bluegrass.
Hercules Whetstone, Mayor of Cornville, there are some things upon this magnificent star of ours that are not in the market,—things so high that you cannot reach and put a price upon them in the cold-blooded shambles of merchandise.
Whetstone.
There you go again, trying to throw star-dust in your benefactor’s eyes. Oh, why did I make you editor of my Cornville Eagle?
Bluegrass.
Because your Eagle was asleep, and I was the only one who could wake him up and make him soar into a higher circulation. He looked like a whipped buzzard that had dulled his talons upon old newspapers; but I put new life into him; and now that I have made you the proprietor of a newspaper which is a household word, and which will be in every scholar’s library at the close of human learning, you scoff at me. Such is glory in a commercial age! Columbus may discover, but the merchant Americus gives his name to two continents.
Scythe.
Good woman, some undesirable chemical change may take place in your fish. I would advise you to put some salt on them. I am a chemist.
Catharine.
The fish are dead; they cannot hear.
Scythe.
Mayor Whetstone, why do you not change the Eagle to the Hawkeye Review of Western Science?
Bluegrass.
Strip that proud bird of his plumage, and in less than seven revolutions of this magnificent star of ours he will have fewer followers than a vanquished rooster.
Whetstone.
Major, I cannot resist you. You are my true, my great and only editor. Give me your hand; let us be friends.
Bluegrass.
Now let us go on with our romance. [To Catharine.] Bring on your fish!
Catharine.
There are as queer fish inside as outside the basket, I’ll warrant you. [She presents the basket to Whetstone; he selects a codfish.] That is a fish in weight and look of much import,—the codfish. He is an aristocrat among the shoals and schools, and he has done much to build up our own aristocracy. [She presents the basket to Scythe, and he selects a Holothurian.]
Scythe.
Why, madam, this is a rare fish, a Holothurian, vulgarly called a sea-cucumber, from its resemblance to that common garden vegetable. I’ll mount its skeleton at once. It is the fish of science, and has the power of analysis; for ’tis written that when attacked, for self-protection it will divide itself into many pieces, or turn itself inside out.
She presents the basket to Bluegrass, and he selects a flying-fish.
Bluegrass.
How beautiful!
Catharine.
Yes, ’tis a flying-fish, which, rising above the heavy and obscurer element of its kind, and using its fins as wings, in aërial courses, sparkling like a jewel, beholds the glittering and sunlit scenery of the upper air. There is much similarity between these excursions and the poet’s fancies. And as these lower creatures in their airy flights excite the wonderment of fishes and please men, so may human excursions in the higher element of fancy excite the wonderment of men and please the gods.
Bluegrass [in admiration].
Madam, consider yourself engaged as sea-side correspondent of the Cornville Eagle: topic, sea-fish and their morals. Please accept my card, and draw upon me for a month’s salary.
[Gives his card.
Scythe [writing in his note-book].
Item,—this is important. In evolution, the grasshopper sprang from the flying-fish.
Whetstone.
What birds are those flying above the waves and darting like flying squirrels?
Catharine.
They are the larks of the sea, and in the wake of a ship are wider awake than your land larks.
Bluegrass.
Madam, with your permission,—upon the first streak of dawn our common meadow-lark has been known to climb the heavenly vaults above this magnificent star of ours like a morning-glory of song.
Whetstone.
Professor Scythe, explain.
Scythe [examining the birds with his glass].
Leaving, for a moment, grave mysteries of the deep upon the floor of the abysmal sea, we ascend to trace in the flight of a simple bird its name and family. The wings of the bird are the pre-Adamite forefeet of an animal which, through ceaseless efforts of evolution, became crowned with feathers. From the movements of these feathered forefeet we can tell all about the bird. Now, Mayor Whetstone, take this glass. [He gives glass to Whetstone, who follows the movements of the bird with it.] Now watch closely the parabola of dip or curve of flight that puts it in the great family of web-footed water-fowls. See the unwavering scoop, the practiced and web-footed ease with which it grazes a wave. We have before us a genuine sea-gull.
Whetstone.
Major, put that in the Eagle, and see how it looks in print. Something’s bitten me! it must be one of your sea-fleas.
[Looking up his sleeve.
Bluegrass.
Sea-flea; do you see it?
Catharine.
To see a flea, you must flee the sea,—unless perchance you may see a deep-sea flea such as I have at the bottom of my basket. [Takes out a lobster.] This is the wicked flea the fisherman pursues. He will give a biting relish to your codfish.
[Offers lobster to Whetstone, who draws back.
Whetstone.
Catharine.
Such is his seeming.
Whetstone.
What a monster! [Observing the lobster.] Professor, what’s his scientific history?
Scythe [weariedly].
I don’t know.
Whetstone.
Don’t know! Professor, it cost me a heap of money to build my nursery of learning, the Cornville Academy, and I’m going to make it the biggest paying institution on this broad continent. I’ve advertised you in letters big as fence-posts as our own prided prince of science, engaged at an enormous salary. There are already applications for next term from over five hundred anxious fathers of wonderful sons. Can I afford to disappoint them? No. Can you stand there and calmly tell me you cannot give me so simple a thing as the history of a deep-sea flea?
Scythe [looking at lobster with his glass].
In the race for life, he first made his appearance in the epoch of the mammoth, anterior to the gigantic antediluvians, before the apparition of man upon the earth, and at a season in the progressive series of pre-Adamite evolution soon after the separation of the crocodile branch from the main stem, about forty-five millions of years ago.
Whetstone.
Astonishing! so long as that?
Scythe.
I will not in detail give his scientific biography. It is sufficient that during this period he gorged himself with the blood of these primeval mammoths, which accounts for his size, and often, frenzied by the harrowing appetite of this parasite, these gigantic and prehistoric brutes made the primeval forests for a hundred miles ring with their helpless bellowings. But I will not further excite your pity for the remote ages.
Whetstone.
Go on, Professor, go on!
Scythe.
This was the summer of his race; but, alas! then came the glacial period. He was frozen up with the mammoths, and remained so for probably twenty millions of years; but such was his tenacity of life, that when the world thawed out, he again appeared, his skin somewhat hardened by exposure,—a fact which you will recognize,—but otherwise cheerful, and in his usual health. Well may his kind be grateful; for, wrapped in ice for æons of time, he was the slender thread upon which their future hung.
Whetstone.
But why did he take to the sea?
Scythe.
After the apparition of man upon the earth he was driven into the sea by the excited inhabitants.
Whetstone.
Major, this is truly wonderful. The Academy will succeed.
Bluegrass.
’Tis the very romance of science.
Whetstone.
But, Professor, what was the glacial period?
Scythe.
Well, sir, the glacial period was an epoch when, from a business point of view, ice was cheaper than dirt. Had the apparition then occurred, man could have gone all over the globe on skates. But as it was a vast ball of ice, he would probably have slipped off into space, and nothing more would have been heard of him. And so this star of ice for countless ages rolled on through the sky like a big snow-ball; but at last the great electric sun struck the earth on the equator, which accounts for the equatorial bulge which exists to this day. Then commenced the greatest drama of the elements ever witnessed upon our planet. The vast ice-fields were riven in twain, with terrific reports which reverberated through the heavenly spaces, and to which our present thunder is but as an elemental whisper. Icebergs formed, and in fantastic and sublime shapes, towering mountain high and illuminated by the sun, floated down towards the equator.
Whetstone.
Go on, don’t stop; go on.
Scythe.
Then commenced the great oscillation of the land-masses; then the eruptive rocks and sedimentary strata were moved from their foundations. Then occurred the geologic epoch of the denudation and washdown of hills and mountains, and then were formed the ocean floors, the islands, and the continental areas which we inhabit.
Whetstone.
Put that in the Eagle. [The lobster clings to him.] Hello! What’s the matter now? Professor! Major! Woman! Take off your flea!
Bluegrass.
Be a hero!
Whetstone.
Great thunder! take him off. He has claws to his eyes. [Takes off his coat, with the lobster clinging to it.] Major, this is your fault. Don’t speak to me again until you apologize. Come, Professor.
[Exeunt Scythe and Whetstone carrying his coat with lobster clinging to it.
Catharine.
Fair is your prairie wit, and these sea-scenes have keen spices which well try its mettle. He that is young and fresh shall have the salt of experience. Many that come here to be salted by the sea are seasoned by love. Would you be so seasoned?
Bluegrass.
If it be a fair, good seasoning.
Catharine.
At yonder villa by the sea I well know Mademoiselle Ninon, a French maid who is in friendly service to one Violet. She has a dainty wit, with a foreign flavor that will season you well.
Bluegrass.
Acquaint us. I would be so seasoned.
Catharine.
To-day she comes that I may tell her fortune. Be at the masquerade to-night; wear a blue ribbon,—there you shall meet her. Trust me. Fare thee well.
[Exit Catharine.
Bluegrass.
This is genuine romance. ’Tis sweeter than ambrosia. Oh, why was I so long pent up in the heart of a continent? Farewell, dull facts of business which have stung me sharper than thistles. Roll on, magnificent star, and bring night and romance.
[Exit.
Scene II.—Portico of the Dolphin Inn.
Enter Whetstone and Bluegrass in conversation.
Whetstone.
Northlake is a most melancholy man. I believe if he had a warehouse full of anchors, and the market for anchors was booming, he’d be hopelessly unhappy. Said I to him, to-day: Northlake, don’t look so confoundedly gloomy; cheer up! the day I marry your niece Violet, you shall have five hundred thousand dollars.
Bluegrass.
His villa looks like the residence of a prince.
Whetstone.
So it does; but it is covered with a mortgage from cellar to roof. One month ago Northlake was a rich man, but, leaving his books and plunging into speculation, he lost not only his fortune, but also that of his niece Violet, who is an orphan, and whose fortune was intrusted to his keeping. Her loss seems to trouble him most.
Bluegrass.
When did you become acquainted with him?
Whetstone.
Last summer, when they were travelling in the West. I had some business with him, and I then got a glance at his niece. I have since corresponded with him. When I met him to-day he had a book in his hand. I asked him, What’s that book? He replied, It’s a work on speculative philosophy. Said I, Throw it away, and study the market quotations and crops; that’s the kind of speculative philosophy you need.
Bluegrass.
What did he say to that?
Whetstone.
He opened his book and commenced reading. Said I: Close your book. I don’t understand it, and I don’t want to. I’ve made you a business proposition that’s worth more than all your books. I’ve got the booty, and you’ve got the beauty. Is it a trade?
Enter Punch, who tries to overhear the conversation.
Bluegrass.
Whetstone.
He replied, You shall have her, but you must first woo her as a tender and gallant lover should, and thus win also her dower of tenderness and fancy.
Bluegrass.
How did that strike you?
Whetstone.
Oh, said I, I’ll show my good points. I’m rich, noble, and good; she’ll have me.
Bluegrass.
How did that affect him?
Whetstone.
Come, Whetstone, said he, you’re a practical man. The most practical man in love is the most fanciful. Come to the masquerade to-night in a heroic character.—And I’m going.
Bluegrass.
What kind of a hero will you assume to be?
Whetstone.
Oh, any kind, just so it’s a hero. I can outdo any of them.
Bluegrass [perceiving Punch].
Hello! my friend, can you tell us where to get masquerade suits?
Punch.
Yonder, gentlemens. [Pointing to a neighboring shop.] I recommends him. He is a good neighbor and an honest man. Good day, gentlemens.
[Punch slips into his shop by a side door.
Whetstone [reading the sign over the door].
Peter Punch. Masquerade Suits and Unk-Weed Liniment. For sale or rent.—That’s a queer sign!
Bluegrass.
They are well suited; for the liniment is a lining under the suits.
[They enter the shop by front door.
Scene III.—A costumer’s shop. Punch arranging his costumes.
Enter Whetstone and Bluegrass.
Punch.
Walk into mine shop, gentlemens. You do me great honors.
Whetstone.
Are you not the same man we met outside?
Punch.
Did he say I was honest?
Whetstone.
You have it.
Punch.
Mine good friends, that was mine brother.
Whetstone.
Why, you have the same marks. What are you up to?
Punch.
Mine friend, we were born twins; our own father couldn’t tell us apart.
Bluegrass.
Nature must have been in a proud mood when she duplicated you.
Whetstone.
What’s your name?
Punch.
Peter Punch.
Whetstone.
What’s your brother’s name?
Punch.
Peter Punch Number Two. We are twins; I swears it. Mine friends, these are my beautiful suits; and in this bottle is the wonder of seven hemispheres, the sublimely famous and justly celebrated unk-weed liniment. By your firesides, rub it in well. With one wing of medicinal gum, and the other of healing balsam, it flies to its proud home in the bones. Gentlemens, rub it in well. There it works its marvels. This, gentlemens, is the unk-weed art gallery [pointing to two pictures]. This one is before taking; that one, after taking. Gentlemens, rub it on your skins inside, and put one of my suits on the outside, and then you do marvels. I swears it.
Whetstone.
Which do you sell or rent,—the suits, or the liniment? [Punch winks an eye.] Why do you wink?
Punch.
Goodness gracious! you surprises me so. Mine eyelid slips down. Gentlemens, I cannot rent the wonderful unk-weed.
Bluegrass.
Peter Punch, you are a compound fraction. Give your doctor fraction a quick drop, and your tailor fraction a fresh seaming. We have good sound characters, but you and your tailor’s goose may mend them. I wish to cast upon a French maid a romantic spell, something in the aurora borealis fashion.
Punch.
Gentlemens, I haven’t got it [winking his eye].
Bluegrass.
Why do you wink?
Punch.
Mine friend, it is my little weakness. I swears it.
Bluegrass.
Try to keep your blind up. It makes me suspicious that something wrong is going on inside. Peter, have you a rainbow suit?
Punch.
Mine dear friend, I’ve just what will suit you. I made it for a gentlemans just like you, but it rained and he didn’t call for it.
Bluegrass.
He was only a fair-weather beau; but I’ll be a rainbow as well. [Punch shows him the suit.] That will suit. Now show me a mask. [Punch shows him a mask.] Why, it has a nose upon it like a barn-gable.
Punch.
Mine friend, a big nose makes a strong character [laying his finger along his nose].
Bluegrass.
Its cheeks are smooth as a boy’s.
Punch.
Mine friend, how would a rainbow look with a beard on it? Oh, mine friend!
Bluegrass.
Come out from under your disguise, Peter Punch. You have the eternal fitness of things under your thumb, and that makes a good tailor and a shrewd philosopher.
Punch.
I thank you, gentlemens.
Whetstone.
Show me some clothes worn by kings, princes, and potentates.
Punch.
Mine friend, let me take your measure. [He takes Whetstone’s measure with a tape-line.]
Whetstone.
Do you think you can take my measure for a suitable character suit with your puny tape-line? Put up your line, and search Flatpuddle Smith’s Biography of Great Men,—although I must say there are in that book some of the biggest measures of the littlest men on earth; and besides, old Heavyweight, who made his fortune putting sand in sugar, is on the first page. They asked for sugar, and he sandpapered them. It’ll go rough with him. Peter Punch, listen to my measure. I’m a merchant prince, Mayor Whetstone, from Cornville, near the capital of Illinois, called Hercules after my grand-uncle Hercules, who drove the Indians down the Mississippi.
Punch [presenting a robe].
This is the robe that Julius Cæsar wore when he did thrice refuse the crown up at the Capitol.
Whetstone.
Why did he refuse it? Didn’t it fit him? I don’t want that.
Punch [presenting a suit].
This is a suit worn by a shepherd boy as he tends his flocks,—young Norval’s suit.
Whetstone.
Confound you! Do you think I want to be a shepherd boy, and herd sheep?
Punch [presenting another suit].
This is the suit of a Highlander.
Whetstone.
That’s high-sounding. Let me see it. What’s this?
Punch.
That goes around the waist like a petticoat.
Whetstone.
Where’s the other part?
Punch.
There is none.
Whetstone.
Take back your Highlander. [Punch winks.] Stop winking!
Punch.
Goodness gracious! you surprises me so. But here, mine friend. This is a suit of King Richard the Lion-Heart, who slew thousands of Saracens in one day.
Whetstone.
Why didn’t they stop him, the old villain? Peter Punch, you may as well put down both shutters over your eyes. Business is closed.
[Going.
Punch.
Wait, wait, mine dear friend; I have a beautiful suit of armor, magnificent! I saves it for you. I keeps it wrapped up. It is the suit of a grand knight-errant. [Takes covering from mounted suit of armor.]
Whetstone.
Ah, that’s something like the thing. The business we are on is a sort of a night errand. What line of business was he in? Did he travel much at night?
Punch.
Mine friend, you is mistaken. The knight-errant was a great man who went around foreign countries clad in a suit of mail, rescuing beautiful damsels, over seven hundred years ago.
Whetstone.
So long ago as that? His clothes must be a little rusty; but you can rub them well. You don’t say the suit is seven hundred years old?
Punch.
Over seven hundred years, mine friend [winking].
Whetstone.
Major, what would they say if they knew of this in Cornville? So the old rascal used to go around in the night, rescuing beautiful damsels; and they called them night errands! Didn’t he rescue the ugly damsels too?
Punch.
History is silent, mine friend.
Whetstone.
Well, I do declare! I’ll keep up his trade. I’ll build up the old industry on these shores, and I’ll make it hum.
Punch.
I have English, French, Spanish, and other cheaper kinds; but I’ll give you the suit of a grand German knight-errant, because he was a great Teuton.
Whetstone.
What is the rent to-night for the so-called Teuton knight-errant?
Punch.
You shall have him cheap. I will calculate. One cent a year, one dollar for each hundred years,—seven dollars, mine friend.
Whetstone.
Isn’t that tooting it rather high for a night errand?
Punch.
Mine friend, the Teuton knight-errant was the most substantial and high-toned.
Whetstone.
Substantial and high-toned! I’ll invest. I’ll wake up your old Teuton knight-errant, and make him hum.
[Exeunt.
Scene IV.—A street. Evening. Jack, disguised as an ape, on his way to the masquerade.
Enter Fopdoodle and Tom, his valet.
Fopdoodle.
By Jove, what is it?—Tom, my man, stand firm.—Audacious creature! So much hair on it, you know. I’d kindly thank you for your card.
Jack.
Apes and conundrums, having been made before pockets, do not carry their cards. Did you ever husk an ear of corn?
Fopdoodle.
Audacious beast! Fopdoodle’s no farmer.
Jack.
Then how do you expect to husk me by the ear? For the ear of an ape stands higher than a vegetable.
Fopdoodle.
What a misapplication of terms!
Jack.
Why did you not bring your shell with you?
Fopdoodle.
What shell?
Jack.
The shell of a goose-egg. Go get it, and put yourself in it, or I’ll make an omelet of you by assault and battery.
[Moving around Fopdoodle.
Fopdoodle.
By Jove, you’re a ferocious ape. I’ll have you arrested. Ho, there! Oh, policeman, come at once, I pray you, and quell this riot. Come, I command you. But he don’t come. What an abominable government we do have! If we had a king, then I’d be protected,—a nice, sweet king! Then, you know, I’d go to court; then I’d be My Lord Fopdoodle. Oh, I’d dearly love a king.
Jack.
What would you do if an enemy arose?
Fopdoodle.
Why, then the king would say: Upon the breeze that blows upon the borders of my land, I sniff the enemy. My lord, my good and trusty Lord Fopdoodle, hasten. Gather two hundred thousand men or so of our confiding yeomanry and stanchest citizens. Go put the enemy down.—And I would do it.
Jack.
But suppose he wouldn’t stay down?
Fopdoodle.
Tom, my man, stand firm.—When a king puts an enemy down, he puts him under ground.
Jack.
How would you raise the cash?
Fopdoodle.
If I saw the treasury running low, I’d rise and thus address the throne of majesty: Of late, most able king, thy servant, Lord Fopdoodle, whom thou hast ennobled, hath observed sundry of his former friends, shopkeepers, swelling with wealth and aping his nobility. I’ll strip them of their towering ambition by taking off the goods from their top shelves. And then the king would say, Good my lord, thou art aright; go thou and do it. And I would go and do it.
Jack.
Would you have any whims?
Fopdoodle.
Wouldn’t I have whims!—Tom, my man, stand firm.—Thousands of them. If a king and his lords can’t have their whims, they’re not so good as other people are. Some day, when the king was in a right good humor, I would say: Your valiant Majesty, an ape doth offend me much. I have a whim. I crave a boon, my liege, a boon, my sovereign; and he would say, I’ll grant it thee. Then I would say, I thank thee, good my sovereign. I would that all the apes in thy kingdom were destroyed. And he would say, Take this my signet ring, and let them perish.
Jack.
And you would kill poor Jack?
Fopdoodle.
Are you Jack? Mr. Northlake’s own son Jack, and cousin to beautiful Miss Violet? Why, Jack, I could love even an ape if he were cousin to the beautiful Miss Violet.
Jack.
Would you cozen an ape?
Fopdoodle.
[Aside] I’ll steal into Miss Violet’s secret heart through this half-open, half-witted gate of a cousin. [Aloud] I’m in love. Help me, Jack. About the king, good Jack, I was but joking; and if I were married to Miss Violet, and were the king’s lord, I would not hurt a hair on an ape’s body. Oh, she’s a sweet conundrum; a rose is a conundrum,—why, I’m a sweet conundrum myself. Jack, you’re a stunning good fellow, an awfully good ape. Let me stroke ape’s hair.
Jack.
Paws off! You Miss my cousin, but she’ll not miss you. I represent to-night a missing link which were well found in you. I’m in full dress,—Nature’s regulation costume for the ape; but you commit a barefaced outrage with your ape’s nature minus the hair. Meet me at the masquerade.
[Going.
Fopdoodle.
Tom, my man, stand firm!—Don’t go, Jack.—I’ll go too.
[Exeunt.
Scene V.—Violet’s boudoir, dimly lighted.
Enter Northlake, with domino on his arm, reading a book.
Northlake.