They were really marvelous, the things he did on that poster.
In the right-hand upper corner he appeared running across country on all fours, with a red herring sticking out from his coat-tails, while far behind came hounds and horsemen hunting him. But their chance of ever catching him up was clearly hopeless.
To the left he was represented as running away over one of the wildest and most rugged bits of landscape we have ever seen with a very big man on his back. Six policemen stood scattered about a mile behind him. They had evidently been running after him, but had at last given up the pursuit as useless.
In the center of the poster he was having a friendly fight with seventeen ladies and gentlemen. Judging from the costumes, the affair appeared to be a wedding. A few of the guests had already been killed and lay dead about the floor. The survivors, however, were enjoying themselves immensely, and of all that gay group he was the gayest.
At the moment chosen by the artist, he had just succeeded in cracking the bridegroom's skull.
'We must see this,' said we to ourselves. 'This is good.' And we had a bob's worth.
But he did not do any of the things that we have mentioned, after all—at least, we mean we did not see him do any of them. It seems he did them 'off,' and then came on and told his mother all about it afterward.
He told it very well, but somehow or other we were disappointed. We had so reckoned on that fight.
By the bye, we have noticed, even among the characters of real life, a tendency to perform most of their wonderful feats 'off.'
It has been our privilege since then to gaze upon many posters on which have been delineated strange and moving stage events.
We have seen the hero holding the villain up high above his head, and throwing him about that carelessly that we have felt afraid he would break something with him.
We have seen a heroine leaping from the roof of a house on one side of the street and being caught by the comic man standing on the roof of a house on the other side of the street and thinking nothing of it.
We have seen railway trains rushing into each other at the rate of sixty miles an hour. We have seen houses blown up by dynamite two hundred feet into the air. We have seen the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the destruction of Pompeii, and the return of the British army from Egypt in one 'set' each.
Such incidents as earthquakes, wrecks in mid-ocean, revolutions and battles we take no note of, they being commonplace and ordinary.
But we do not go inside to see these things now. We have two looks at the poster instead; it is more satisfying.
The Irishman, to return to our friend, is very fond of whisky—the stage Irishman, we mean. Whisky is forever in his thoughts—and often in other places belonging to him, besides.
The fashion in dress among stage Irishmen is rather picturesque than neat. Tailors must have a hard time of it in stage Ireland.
The stage Irishman has also an original taste in hats. He always wears a hat without a crown; whether to keep his head cool or with any political significance we cannot say.
THE DETECTIVE
Ah! he is a cute one, he is. Possibly in real life he would not be deemed anything extraordinary, but by contrast with the average of stage men and women, any one who is not a born fool naturally appears somewhat Machiavellian.
He is the only man in the play who does not swallow all the villain tells him and believe it, and come up with his mouth open for more. He is the only man who can see through the disguise of an overcoat and a new hat.
There is something very wonderful about the disguising power of cloaks and hats upon the stage. This comes from the habit people on the stage have of recognizing their friends, not by their faces and voices, but by their cloaks and hats.
A married man on the stage knows his wife, because he knows she wears a blue ulster and a red bonnet. The moment she leaves off that blue ulster and red bonnet he is lost and does not know where she is.
She puts on a yellow cloak and a green hat, and coming in at another door says she is a lady from the country, and does he want a housekeeper?
Having lost his beloved wife, and feeling that there is no one now to keep the children quiet, he engages her. She puzzles him a good deal, this new housekeeper. There is something about her that strangely reminds him of his darling Nell—maybe her boots and dress, which she has not had time to change.
Sadly the slow acts pass away until one day, as it is getting near closing-time, she puts on the blue ulster and the red bonnet again and comes in at the old original door.
Then he recognizes her and asks her where she has been all these cruel years.
Even the bad people, who as a rule do possess a little sense—indeed, they are the only persons in the play who ever pretend to any—are deceived by singularly thin disguises.
The detective comes in to their secret councils, with his hat drawn down over his eyes, and followed by the hero speaking in a squeaky voice; and the villains mistake them for members of the band and tell them all their plans.
If the villains can't get themselves found out that way, then they go into a public tea-garden and recount their crimes to one another in a loud tone of voice.
They evidently think that it is only fair to give the detective a chance.
The detective must not be confounded with the policeman. The stage policeman is always on the side of the villain; the detective backs virtue.
The stage detective is, in fact, the earthly agent of a discerning and benevolent Providence. He stands by and allows vice to be triumphant and the good people to be persecuted for awhile without interference. Then when he considers that we have all had about enough of it (to which conclusion, by the bye, he arrives somewhat late) he comes forward, handcuffs the bad people, sorts out and gives back to the good people all their various estates and wives, promises the chief villain twenty years' penal servitude, and all is joy.
THE SAILOR
He does suffer so with his trousers. He has to stop and pull them up about twice every minute.
One of these days, if he is not careful, there will be an accident happen to those trousers.
If the stage sailor will follow our advice, he will be warned in time and will get a pair of braces.
Sailors in real life do not have nearly so much trouble with their trousers as sailors on the stage do. Why is this? We have seen a good deal of sailors in real life, but on only one occasion, that we can remember, did we ever see a real sailor pull his trousers up.
And then he did not do it a bit like they do it on the stage.
The stage sailor places his right hand behind him and his left in front, leaps up into the air, kicks out his leg behind in a gay and bird-like way, and the thing is done.
The real sailor that we saw began by saying a bad word. Then he leaned up against a brick wall and undid his belt, pulled up his 'bags' as he stood there (he never attempted to leap up into the air), tucked in his jersey, shook his legs, and walked on.
It was a most unpicturesque performance to watch.
The thing that the stage sailor most craves in this life is that somebody should shiver his timbers.
'Shiver my timbers!' is the request he makes to every one he meets. But nobody ever does it.
His chief desire with regard to the other people in the play is that they should 'belay there, avast!' We do not know how this is done; but the stage sailor is a good and kindly man, and we feel convinced he would not
