The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862 - Various страница 5

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862 - Various

Скачать книгу

of stepping into the street and concluding my career at once, lest an anti-climax should be my fate.

      In the morning, I called on the editor of the newspaper.

      I desire to recommend my reader to subscribe at once to The Tyre Times, and thus aid to sustain the paper of a gentleman and a scholar, who was, as editors usually are, a plain-spoken, sensible man, conscious of the presence of talent in his sanctum, by 'sympathetic attraction.' The editor of the Times looked into the circumstances of my case with an experienced and kindly eye, and then said to me,—

      'My dear sir, you can not succeed here with a lecture. We have had several in our village within a few years, but never one which 'paid,' unless it was one on phrenology, or physiology, or psychology, and plentifully spiced with humor of the coarsest sort. If you want to make money in Tyre, you'll take my advice and get a two-headed calf, a learned pig, or a band of nigger minstrels. Any of these things will answer your purpose, if you want money; but if you have ambition to gratify, if you want to lecture for the sake of lecturing, that's a different thing. At all events, you shall have my good wishes, and I'll do all I can to get you a house. But it won't pay.'

      The reader knows that if I had not been a fool I would have understood and heeded a statement so plain as this, made by an editor. But then, if I hadn't been a fool, you know I should never have started on a lecture tour at all. So, being a fool, I had bills printed, hired a hall (at ten dollars), and was duly announced to lecture in Tyre on the coming Tuesday evening. The same afternoon, The Tyre Times appeared, and its editorial column contained the following notice, which I read with great interest, it being my first appearance in any periodical:—

      LECTURE AT GRECIAN HALL.—We take pleasure in announcing that Prof. GREEN D. BROWN, of New York city, will favor the citizens of Tyre with a lecture on Tuesday evening next. From what we know of the gentleman, we are satisfied our citizens will not regret attending the lecture. We trust he may not be met with an audience so small as lectures have heretofore drawn out in Tyre. The apathy of our citizens in these matters, we have before stated, is disgraceful. Let there be a good turn-out.

      But there was not a good turn-out. The receipts were two dollars and a half. The proprietor of the hall consented to take the receipts for his pay, and I returned to the hotel to muse over my unhappy fortunes.

      The landlord took occasion the next morning, as I was passing out of the house, to remind me that my baggage had not arrived.

      'No,' said I, 'but, as I soon leave Tyre, I shan't need it.'

      The landlord looked at my dirty collar and bosom as if he doubted either my sanity or my decency, and remarked that perhaps I knew his rules compelled him to present the bills of strangers semi-weekly.

      'O, yes! that's all right,' said I; 'I'll see you when I come back from the printing-office.'

      I noticed that mine host stood watching to see that I entered the printing-office safely.

      The editor remarked, after I had told him all the experience narrated here, commencing with the washing-machines,—

      'It's a bad case, and I don't admire your experience at all, to speak candidly; but I have a little idea of my own to work out, and you can help me do it, perhaps. In the first place, though, I want to know whether you intend to continue in this line of business,—eh?'

      'Not I,' was my fervent reply; 'I'm satisfied to leave lecturing to those who have a reputation, and to earn my bread and butter in a, for me, more legitimate way. But what is it you have in view?'

      'Come and see me this evening, when I am at leisure, and I'll tell you what my enterprise is. Meantime, will you sell me your lecture? I can't afford to pay much for it, but I'll agree to settle your hotel bill if you'll part with it. Not that I think it's worth it, but you need to be helped somehow right away.'

      I jumped at the chance, and thanked my friend heartily. He asked if I would please go and send the landlord to him, and I retired to perform that errand.

      I was punctual to my appointment in the evening, and listened to the project my editorial angel had in view; a plan by which he proposed to inflict a lesson on the negligent Tyrians, and at the same time replenish my purse. He explained to me the part I was to perform in this enterprise, and I found I could enter heartily into the spirit of it. We shook hands in the best of humors, and parted that evening understanding each other perfectly.

      III.—HE MAKES A HIT IN TYRE

      The next day, the entire jobbing facilities of the Times office were brought into requisition, and toward evening a mammoth bill was posted around the town, which read as follows:—

MONS. BELITZ'SCELEBRATED AND MAGNIFICENT EXHIBITION,THE GREAT TRAVELING HUMBURG!The most wonderful entertainment, whetherCAININE, PRISTINE, OR QUININE,ever brought before the astonished Public's visual organs!!!

      The avant courier of this monster troupe has the honor of announcing to the ladies and gentlemen of Tyre, that Mons. BELITZ, accompanied by his entire retinue of attachés and supes, Female Dancers and Dogs, Operatic Vocalists and Vixens, Royal Musicians and Monsters, Bengal Tigers and Time-servers, Magicians and Madmen, Flying Birds, Swimming Fishes, Walking Cats and Dogs, Crawling Reptiles, and various other extraordinary and impossible arrangements, the like of which never before appeared in Bog county, until the arrival of the present occasion, to wit:—

AT GRECIAN HALL, TYRE,On Saturday Evening, December 22, 1859—> LOOK AT THE ARRAY OF TALENT! <—MONS. BELITZ,the celebrated Magician from Egypt, performer general toTHE GRAND FOO FOO,and professor of the Black Art to all the crowned heads of the Cannibal Islands and Ham Sandwichlands!!MADEMOISELLE HELIOTROPE,the charming Danseuse from all the city theatres, but most recently from the Imperial Deutscher Yolks Garten, Liverpool, Ireland!SIGNOR STRAWSTEKOWSKI,the celebrated Demagogue and Snake eater, whose unrivaled feat with a living Gryllus, whose fangs have never been extracted, fills thousands with awe and delight!YANKEE SHOCKWIG,the mirth-splitting and side-provoking delineator of down-east horse peculiarities. Must be appreciated to be seenHERR BALAMSASS,the distinguished Vocalist from Italy, whose lower notes, as recently discovered by the celebrated examination before the Council of Trent, reach so far below the epigastrium as to be utterly inaudible to the most acute auricular organs!BRUDDER GEORGE AND AUNTY CLAWSON,the never-to-be-sufficiently-equaled delineators of Ethiopian eccentricities, whose performances during the winter of 1869 delighted overflowing houses in the Cape Cod Lunatic Asylum for 4000 consecutive nightsBENJAMIN BOLT, Esq.,the justly-celebrated trumpeter from the splendid orchestral band attached to Marnum's Buseum, New York city, for the past fifty years!FANTADIMO FANTODIMUS,the graceful and efficient master of ceremonies, whose efforts have been awarded by the entire available population of Blackwell's Island, in a series of resolutions of the most pathetic description!Owing to future engagements, the stay of this troupe in Tyre will bePOSITIVELY FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY,when the Programme will be specified in small bills of the eveningAdmittance, 25 cents. Doors open at 6; Master of Ceremonies makes his bow at 7PROF. BROWN D. GREEN, AGENT.

      Against the advice of the editor of the Times, I dispatched an agent over to Sidon, with a supply of blanked bills from the same form, with instructions to arrange for a similar 'sell' on the following Monday evening in that charming village.

      I

Скачать книгу